


Among the Dead

by Aceflyheight



Series: Tales of the Multi-verse [1]
Category: No Fandom, Original Work, Unspecified Fandom
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Bonding, Female Protagonist, Friendship, Gen, Horror, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Female Character, LGBTQ Themes, Novel, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, POV Female Character, Survival, Survival Horror, Survivor Guilt, Teenagers, Trans Female Character, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-26 18:49:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6251473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aceflyheight/pseuds/Aceflyheight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sometimes, you just want to pick up everything and start over again." I don't even remember where I read that sentence, but I can't seem to get those words out of my head. They're stuck in there and mocking me--haunting me--for every stupid thing decision that I made to get us where we're at now.</p>
<p>Today is March the seventeenth. My name is Jane Howard. I'm sixteen years old and can't do anything but watch as my whole world burns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 01

**Author's Note:**

> At the beginning of each chapter for the first four chapters, I'd like to start with a look inside each character's head at their current situation. Here's the first one.
> 
> "My name is Jane. Only a few days ago I was a high school student looking forward to Spring Break. Now, I'm doing everything that I can just to survive. One moment, I'm bringing down my crowbar and listening to the sickening crunch as it cracks another skull. The next, I'm looking down the iron sights of my rifle and trying to calm my shaking hands as I ready myself to pull the trigger once--twice--sometimes even three times before I manage to kill another one of them."

~March 10, 2008~

“I met the whore’s rat dog as we were both heading for the back door. He looked at me, I looked at him. If it’d been a conversation, it probably woulda gone like, “What about your master?” “What about yours?” “Fuck ‘em.” ” – **T. Sean Collins** , World War Z

 

~6:20 a.m.~

 

“St–stay back!” Nicole yelled as the _thing_ wearing her mother’s face approached her. She gripped the bloodied fire ax in her hands tighter. “I said stay back!”

In spite of what she said, the creature continued to come at her and Nicole struggled to see through the blood that coated her hair and face.

“Get away from me!” she screamed as she suddenly swung the ax in front of her body and didn’t realize what exactly happened until she saw the creature collapse to the floor…her ax buried in its head. As she stared at the blood and skull fragments that now littered the floor, she felt her body begin to shake and the next thing that she knew she was crouching against the wall unable to move.

 

~7:45 a.m.~

 

“ _That is all the updates we have for now. Stay tuned for any future developments._ ”

“I wonder how mom’s doing,” Kaitlyn mumbled as she turned her eyes away from the television and glanced over at the clock on the wall, “it’s seven forty-five, so she’s probably just getting to the hotel right now.” She stretched her arms a little before she curled up tighter in the chair, balancing her bowl of cereal on one knee with the kind of expertise that only came with the years of a teenager who spent most of their time home alone. “Speaking of which, she probably still hasn’t even noticed that she left her cellphone here.”

After a few moments, she pushed the sleeves of her pajamas up a little and smiled as she once again _didn’t_ feel any lace scratching against her skin and driving her mad. Her mom had accidentally bought the set of pajamas a few months beforehand and hadn’t noticed the lace around the collar and sleeves. It was impossible for Kaitlyn to _not_ notice it though. Instead of bringing it to her mom’s attention though, Kaitlyn had just done what she could to cut the lace out of them and wear them without the lace.

She shook her head after a few moments and tried to focus on the television again. All morning she had been watching the news ever since she got out of bed around three hours ago and she still didn’t know what to think.

Well, actually, she knew exactly what to think or at least she thought that she did: the footage was all fake. On every news channel were conflicting reports about ‘zombie hoaxes’ and supposedly ‘actual video footage’ of zombie attacks. For the past three hours, she had laughed at the footage and done her own verbal commentary before she eventually got up to fix her breakfast. To her eyes, the video footage looked as fake as some of Romero’s older zombie flicks.

Just then, she heard what sounded like glass shattering and jumped to her feet–the bowl of cereal now forgotten and spilling across the carpet with the movement. She quickly glanced around before grabbing for the first weapon that she could find: a claw hammer that her mom had left behind on the coffee table. She clenched the hammer tightly in her hand as she quietly began to make her way towards the far end of the house where the noise had come from. A part of her knew that she should have called the police first, but she subconsciously shoved that part aside as she reached the room that the sound had originated from.

As she got to the doorway though, she froze. She froze at the sight of what her brain tried to tell her wasn’t real–couldn’t be real. Her grip on the hammer loosened and she nearly dropped it before she bit her lip hard enough to draw blood and remind her that what she was seeing was real. She took one shaky step forward and then another as she focused entirely on the _thing_ that was trying to crawl through the window–and failing. Its chest and, in particular, its intestines were caught on shards of glass and its struggle to get through the window only shredded its insides more and more. With one last struggle, the creature nearly managed to lurch into the room but all that it truly accomplished was to slice its stomach clean open on a shard and spill its contents at Kaitlyn’s feet.

Kaitlyn couldn’t help stumbling backwards as the scent hit her nose and she tasted acid in the back of her throat. She managed to keep from throwing up though and forced her body to move towards the creature that her brain continued to tell her could not exist while her eyes told her that she was facing down a real life zombie. As she came within striking distance, she felt as if her body went on auto-pilot and she raised the hammer as high as she could before she brought it down with as much force as she could muster on the creature’s right temple again and again and again. By the time that she managed to stop herself, there was barely anything left of the creature’s head besides the mess on the floor. As it began to sink in what had just happened, she felt her entire body begin shaking as she pushed what was left of the corpse back out of the window.

Eventually, she finally managed to stop her body from shaking and quickly made her way into the storage room to grab a pair of binoculars before she hurried outside. As she reached her front yard, she brought the binoculars up to her eyes and scanned her neighborhood as she listened for any kind of noise. There was nothing though that signified that there was a zombie outbreak going on. There were no screams, no sound of nails being pounded into wood, no gunshots, nothing from anywhere around her. For just a moment, Kaitlyn wondered if maybe she had slept through the worst of the apocalypse before she shook that train of thought away and rushed back inside her house. As she got back inside, she began to flip through the channels only to find the same thing on all of them now: video footage of attacks and a single message repeating across the bottom of the screen.

“ _State and local agencies are reporting widespread attacks on citizens across the Southern United States. Authorities are advising people to stay inside, lock their doors, bar their windows, and only open doors for known friends and family who respond intelligently._ ”

She turned off the television at that point and started her computer up, planning to bring up the CDC website. Even if that emergency warning hadn’t called it a zombie outbreak, she could not bring herself to believe that it was anything else. Eventually, the computer loaded the desktop up and she brought up the CDC website and was surprised when she saw that they had already begun to document their findings about what was going on. “All right, so let’s see…transmitted only via bites…has not spread to non-human victims…” she said to herself as she read the findings before she clicked on a different link to see what the CDC was saying about the ‘zombies’ themselves. “So, they’re calling them the ‘ill’ instead of zombies…they’re hostile only to other human beings…they have a ‘ _diminished_ ’ capacity for thought and reason…are uncoordinated…show no ability to communicate…extremely poor eyesight but very good hearing…and it looks like how fast they are is related to the condition of the body,” she said before sighing, “well, there goes any hope for an apocalypse involving Night of the Living Dead style slow zombies.”

At those words, she gave off a sad chuckle and tried to use that verbal gesture and her earlier words to make light of what was going on around her. If she could at least try to see this as a zombie movie and herself as the heroine, maybe…maybe she would be able to survive and keep her wits about herself. If she was lucky, she may would be able to keep her brain occupied and keep it from realizing exactly what was going on until everything was finally over. After all, the last thing that she needed right then would be to break down and start hyperventilating over what was happening.

With all of that now on her mind, she checked to see if anything besides a head shot would take them out. “…any significant damage done to the brain will drop them dead as well as significant injuries to the rest of the body…aka ‘any kind of fatal injury’…well, at least that’s a good thing,” she said as she got out of the chair and began to gather supplies.

Once she thought she had all the supplies that she needed, she left the safety of the house and made her way inside the garage. Her mom had taken the Pontiac so that meant that the only vehicle that she would have would be her dad’s old Honda Gold Wing motorcycle. As she reached the motorcycle though and placed her hand on the cold metal, she felt a few tears come to her eyes before she shook her head. “It was an accident, that’s all. Just an accident,” she mumbled to herself as she went to work placing all of her supplies in the saddlebags on the motorcycle. Eventually, she finished loading all of her supplies and quickly made her way back inside the house all the way to her room. Once there, she wasted no time in opening her closest and grabbing for the first clothes that she could find. “All right, let’s see. Compression shirt, check. T-shirt, check. Gloves, check. Tan leather jacket, check. Jeans, check,” she said to herself as she stripped her pajamas off and quickly put on each piece of clothing before she rushed back into the living room to grab the last few things that she needed. “Okay, now where did mom put…” she began to say only to stop as she eyed the closet in the living room. She made her way to the closet and slowly began to open it. “Bingo,” she said after a moment as she grabbed the scoped Marlin Model 336A rifle that was leaning against the inside wall of the closet. She looked the rifle over and wasn’t surprised when she noticed that the magazine was empty. She glanced up at the shelf at the top of the closet and smiled a little as she saw the box of .30-30 Winchester rounds. With one quick motion, she grabbed the box of rounds and loaded six rounds into the rifle before she made her way into the kitchen.

“Okay, shoes…and that’s it,” she told herself as she placed the box of rounds and rifle on the table before she grabbed a nearby pair of hiking boots and put them on. With that done, she slung the rifle over her shoulder only to realize that with everything that had just happened in the past few minutes, she had completely forgotten about the medicine that her mom had left for her on the counter. She picked up each of the pills that were laid out on a paper towel on the counter before remembering what had happened the last time that she had tried to dry swallow any of them.

She quickly grabbed a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and downed each pill with a swallow of water before she grabbed the pill bottles from underneath the counter, tucking them in her pockets. Following that, she headed outside towards the garage yet again for the final time. She made it in record time and stored the box of ammunition in one of the saddlebags on the bike as she climbed on and started it up. “Please be okay, mom,” she whispered as she gunned the engine and left the garage, intent on heading to Bruce for extra supplies.

About halfway to Bruce though, she slowed the bike down and took her cellphone out of her pocket as she thought about trying to see if she could get in contact with anyone. She tried Jane first but gave up as the phone did nothing but ring and ring. Following that, she tried Nicole, but she didn’t pick up either. She didn’t have Joshua’s or Michael’s numbers so she couldn’t try them even if she wanted to. In the end, she just sighed as she placed the phone back in her pocket as she continued on her way to Bruce. If nothing else, she would just have to try calling them again later or try to drop by their homes after she finished up what she needed to do in Bruce.

“Okay, I really don’t have a good feeling about this,” she mumbled to herself as she arrived at the north entrance to the town and noticed that it seemed to be completely abandoned. She drove around for a few minutes but everywhere she went it was the same: empty parking lots and eerie silence. Eventually, she gave up on seeing any signs of life and went to work scavenging whatever supplies she thought that she could from some of the surrounding stores before she began to make her way towards Clint’s. She pulled the bike in next to one of the gas pumps and filled the gas tank up before she walked around the back of the gas station and found a small gas can. She brought it back to the pump and filled it up as well before she stuffed it in the last bit of empty space remaining in the saddlebags.

With that done, she slid her rifle off of her shoulders and gripped it in her hands as she slowly made her way inside the gas station to search the place before leaving town. She only managed to take about two steps inside before stopping as she heard what sounded like something being ripped or torn. She braced the wooden stock of the rifle against her right shoulder as she leaned around the nearest shelf only to see a single ‘zombie’ down on its knees feasting on someone. Softly, she brought the rifle’s scope up even with her eye, aimed for the creature’s head, and slowly pulled the trigger.

Even with her slow and soft movements though, the sound of the rifle’s trigger and hammer still echoed in the stillness of the gas station and alerted the creature to her presence. Thankfully, it was too late for the creature to even so much as react to her. The round punctured through the bridge of its nose and blew a decent-sized hole out the back of its head before impaling itself in the far wall. Kaitlyn quickly worked the lever action to eject the spent round and chamber a new one as she listened to see if she could hear any other footsteps. She sighed after a few moments as she didn’t hear anything but the wind blowing outside and the drip–drip–drip of what remained of the zombie’s brain as it puddled on the floor. She slung her rifle over her shoulder and kneeled down next to the now _two_ corpses to see if either might have been carrying anything could come in handy. Surprisingly, considering her luck, she was able to find four things that she thought would be worth keeping considering the situation.

From the one that she had killed, she found a brown leather cartridge belt with six rounds of .357 Magnum and six rounds of .38 Special currently still on it, and a Ruger GP100 .357 Mag. model revolver with blued finish and a six-inch barrel in a leather holster on the belt. She paused after a second though and glanced around to make sure that she was still alone before she worked on swapping out her own belt for the cartridge belt. Once she was sure that the belt was secure, she checked the Ruger’s cylinder and felt herself smile as she saw that all six chambers were loaded with .357 Mag. rounds.

As she placed the revolver back into the leather holster, she got down nearer to the other corpse and began to search the body. After a few moments, she found a Heckler & Koch HK45 .45 ACP pistol holstered in a shoulder rig with two ten-round magazines located on the opposite side of the rig. It took her a few moments but she eventually found a way to remove the shoulder rig from the corpse and glanced at the manufacturer’s label. “Let’s see…Blackhawk Holster…Concealed Ambidextrous Shoulder Rig,” she said to herself before she shrugged the shoulder rig on and adjusted it before she put her tan leather jacket back on. With that done, she unlatched the pistol from the shoulder rig and checked to make sure that it was still fully loaded before she latched the pistol back into its holster. She slowly got back to her feet and glanced out the window at the town and the horizon that lay beyond. “What a way to start a zombie apocalypse,” she said as she made her way back outside to her bike. She still had to figure out what to do next though. Should she check up on her friends or find her mom first?

 

~9:30 a.m.~

 

Jane groaned a little as she turned on her side before she slowly opened her eyes. She sighed a little as she glanced at the clock on her desk only to notice that the numbers seemed fuzzy. She realized why after a moment and reached over to grab her glasses before she tried to read the numbers again.

“Nine-thirty already?” she mumbled as she slowly got out of bed and stretched before making her way over to her closet, “stupid worthless alarm.” She opened the closet door and grabbed for one of her binders before she shrugged it on followed by plunging her hand under the neck hole in the binder to awkwardly try to push her breasts apart with her hand to get a flatter looking chest. With that accomplished eventually though, she glanced at her reflection in the mirror and hated how the binder made her body look. She hated it and she hated having to wear it for doing anything that would involve even the possibility of her seeing another living being that wasn't her parents.

She suddenly winced after a few moments and slowly brought her fingertip to her bottom lip, brushing it across the entire surface. She sighed as she pulled her finger away and examined the small spot of blood on it before she wiped it away on the edge of her binder, not caring if it would stain later on. Following that, she grabbed the first t-shirt, dress shirt, and pair of blue jeans that she could find before struggling to pull them on as her brain continued to try to wake up. Eventually, she succeeded and grabbed her keys before she left her room. Just as she set foot in the hallway though, she noticed that the door to her parents’ room was closed. “Guess they’re still asleep,” she mumbled as she made her way to the kitchen and then outside to start her car up so that it could be warming up while she got the rest of her stuff done.

With one turn of her key, she heard the engine turn over and slammed the door shut before heading back towards the front door of the house. She opened the front door and headed back inside to gather up some of her games for her trip over to Joshua’s house for the entire day just like they had agreed on before school had let out for Spring Break. She quickly gathered up a few of her games as soon as she made it back to her room and had just stepped back out into the hallway before she reminded herself that she probably needed to remind her parents that she was going to be over at Joshua’s for the rest of the day. She set the handful of games down next to the wall before she wrapped her hand around the doorknob for her parents’ room and slowly opened the door.

“Momma? Daddy? You guys awake? I just wanted to let you kn…” her voice trailed off at that point as her brain tried to process exactly what it was that she was seeing. In the opposite corner of the room, she could see her mom and dad huddled together with _mouthfuls_ of the other’s flesh in their teeth and covered in blood.

Jane knew that she should have run away right then and there but something kept her rooted to the spot. As she saw both of them glance up at her though, that was all that her body needed to finally turn around and run–the thought of at least closing the door behind her never even once occurring to her.

In her haste though, she failed to slow down as her feet came into contact with the concrete of the kitchen floor and she slipped, bashing her shoulders and back into the concrete. She yelped in pain right before she heard growling and scrambled back to her feet, slamming the kitchen door closed and clumsily locking it. With that done, she stumbled backwards until her already aching back slammed against the wooden wall at the far end of the kitchen as she heard her mom and dad ramming themselves against the door to try to break it down. She could feel herself dangerously close to hyperventilating as her eyes scanned every inch of the kitchen for anything that she could use to defend herself with. Eventually, she spied the supply closet and she made her way there as quickly as she could and threw open the door just as she heard the kitchen door begin to splinter.

She felt her body freeze as she heard the kitchen door essentially groan as it began to splinter before she intentionally backed into the wall and used the pain to get her mind back to being focused on survival. As she began to dig around in the closet, her fingers soon touched cold metal and she gripped the object tightly as she brought it up so that she could see it. She quickly realized that it was nothing more than a regular crowbar, but as she heard the kitchen door finally give way, she realized that it would have to do. She took a quick breath as she turned around only to see her dad already towering over her. She tried to move, to strike with the crowbar, or even so much as duck but she couldn’t as her dad knocked her to the floor. She watched in stunned disbelief as her dad opened his bloodstained mouth and brought it down at full-speed towards her face.

Just as her dad’s teeth were about to tear into her flesh though, Jane’s body began to operate on auto-pilot and before she knew it, she was holding the crowbar sideways in her dad’s mouth. With a quick kick, she managed to scurry away a couple of feet before she got back to her feet and swung the crowbar against the side of her dad’s face. She could hear a sickening crunch as the metal came into contact with her dad’s jaw before she swung again and again until her dad fell into a crumpled heap on the floor. As she saw the body begin to twitch though, she felt her arms raise the crowbar high before bringing it down again and again on her dad’s head.

Once she was sure that the body wasn’t twitching anymore, she took several shaky breaths before nearly dropping the crowbar as she felt a weight crash into her from behind. She hit the concrete hard on her chest but managed to roll over onto her back as her mom tried to pounce on her a second time. She swung the crowbar like a mad man as she tried to keep her mom’s teeth away from any part of her and eventually she realized that her mom was no longer trying to bite her. As she noticed what she had done, she had to force herself to keep from screaming. She had managed to rip half her mom’s face off along with shattering her skull badly enough for her brain to be dripping down on her clothes and had somehow dug the crowbar into her chest and partially disemboweled her, causing her insides to essentially splatter across her clothes.

 

~10:00 a.m.~

 

“Okay…okay, I think that’s everything,” Jane muttered to herself as she slammed the trunk closed and got in the driver’s side before brushing her hand across her forehead in relief only to nearly throw up as she pulled her hand away and spotted the blood on it. “Don’t think about what happened. Just focus on getting the hell out of here,” she tried to tell herself even as she could hear screaming coming from further down her road. “Damn it,” she muttered as she glanced down at her blood-soaked clothes, the pistol holstered at her side, and the rifle lying over in the passenger seat. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath before backing out of the driveway and hitting the gas. She had to find Kaitlyn and everyone. She needed to know if they were okay. First though, she needed to get some extra supplies and there was no way in hell that she was going to go back inside her house after what had happened.

“Ah, shit!” she screamed as she pulled onto the main highway and nearly wound up running over a dazed man that was just standing there. “Hey, watch…” she began but stopped talking as she saw the look in the man’s eyes. She hit the gas again just as the man began to chase her and eventually managed to lose him. “That was too close,” she muttered to herself–trying her best to ignore the sounds of screaming and the sight of her neighbors being torn to shreds in their own yards. “I’ve got to get to town though and grab some supplies. I can’t hole up in my house now after what’s happened,” she told herself as she took her cell phone out of her blue jeans pocket. She tried calling nine-one-one about four times–each time getting a message that all lines were busy–before trying the police–and getting nothing but an automated response from them. She sighed and slowed the car down a little as she typed in the website address for one of the local news station and began to read off the message that was posted all over the site, “ _‘State and local agencies are reporting widespread attacks on citizens across the region. Authorities are advising people to stay inside, lock their doors, bar their windows, and only open doors for known friends and family who respond intelligently.’_ Why can’t you people just call it the zombie apocalypse? After all, that’s what it is.”

“Oh _crap,_ ” she mumbled as she reached the outskirts of Bruce and saw a police officer motioning for her to come to a stop. She came to a stop as quickly as she could and unsnapped the latch on her holster as she watched the officer approach–a Colt Law Enforcement Carbine hanging in front of him supported by a three-point sling. Normally, that would have been one of the stupidest things in the world to do, but she really didn’t know if she could trust anyone anymore. “Officer, what’s going on? Did something happen?” she asked, trying to play it as dumb and cool as she thought that she could.

“It’s nothing to be–Nathan! My god, is that really you?” the police officer asked–purposefully ignoring the blood on Jane’s clothes and the unlicensed firearms in the car.

“Officer Russ–Ethan, what the hell’s happening around here? I mean, there’s a freakin’ zombie outbreak going on!” she asked, entirely losing the dumb and cool act that she had originally planned on using.

“Seriously, I don’t know. All we were told was to try to keep everything here in town under control and keep the peace as everybody gets the supplies that they need. So far, we’ve managed to keep everything under control but I don’t know how much longer that’s going to last. We’ve already had to put down several of what we were told were infected people.”

“Well, sorry to say this, but I’ve got a feeling that things are going to start blowing up really soon,” Jane replied as she checked how much gas was still left in the tank.

“Yeah, me too. I just hope that when everything does go to shit that most of the people will already be out of here…by the way, where are your parents, Nathan? Are they okay?”

Jane began to open her mouth only to realize that she didn’t know what to say. What could she say? That her parents tried to eat her alive and she took a crowbar to their skulls? Eventually, she just lowered her eyes toward the dashboard of her car for a moment and said, “…they’re dead…”

“Damn, sorry to hear th–” Ethan began but stopped as several screams issued from the parking lot of a nearby convenience store. He raised his carbine up and braced the stock against his shoulder as he aligned his eye with the iron sights.

“Need some–” Jane began only to stop as she heard a couple of rounds fire from the gun, “–help?”

“Yeah sure, but as soon as we get rid of them…I want you to get what you need and get to a safe place.”

“Got it,” she replied as she grabbed for her rifle and stepped out of the car so that her hearing wouldn’t get nearly as damaged. She took a deep breath and began to take aim with the iron sights at the remaining eight ‘zombies’ even as her hands trembled at what she was about to do. “Concentrate…focus on the target…steady your aim…don’t fight the recoil…” she whispered to herself as she fired three times: the first shot going wide, the second gouging a small hole in one zombie’s chest, and the third puncturing a different zombie’s skull. She stared at the damage that she had just caused before her mind chided her for her terrible accuracy with iron sights. Even so though, her mind couldn’t help but be impressed with the kind of damage that .32 Remington hollow point rounds could do a target. After a moment, she remembered where she was though and adjusted her stance a little before she managed to take another zombie down and then a third as Ethan finished off the rest.

“Thanks for the assist, Nathan. Hope to see you again soon.”

“Yeah, same here,” she replied as she climbed back into her car.

“Before you go though, you do realize that you didn’t have to aim for their heads, right?”

“What?” Jane asked, admittedly stunned.

“It’s not like in the movies where they can only be killed by a headshot. From what I heard earlier, anything that’ll kill a normal human being will kill them too. Shots to the head, the lungs, and the heart–any of those things should work among others.”

“Well, at least that’ll make it easier to take them down…anyway, good luck with everything,” she said as she put the car back in drive and left town as quickly as possible. She remembered that she had come to town in the first place to get supplies, but there was no way in hell that she was planning on staying even for so much as a few minutes longer after what she had just seen. With those things already in town, she had a really bad feeling that the shit was about to hit the fan very soon and she really didn’t want to be there when it did. Besides, if Joshua was still alive, then she should be able to grab some supplies at his house and manage to get his help for trying to survive what her mind could only think of as being the apocalypse.


	2. Chapter 02

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My name is Joshua. If you were to have asked me a couple of days ago about what I was going to do over Spring Break, I doubt that my answer would have been "try to survive and hopefully kick some ass". Now though, that seems about right. Especially considering that I'm now standing here at the beginning of the end of the world with nothing but a messenger bag and a pipe wrench.

~March 10, 2008~

 

~6:00 p.m.~

 

“Oh…oh god…” Jane whispered to no one in particular as she lowered her crowbar at the sight in front of her and clumsily managed to place it back in her belt. After a moment, she felt her own feet trying give out on her and wound up bracing herself against the nearest wall to keep herself from falling into the putrid mess on the floor that was once upon a time another human being just like her. Even after what she’d seen already, she still had to force her stomach to not turn over at the sight and barely managed it after a moment before she took a few shaky steps towards the corpse. As she reached it, she kneeled down and tried to block out the stench as she reminded herself to not look at what was left of its face and to focus on searching its pockets for anything that could be useful. Anything that they could use to help them survive the night ahead.

She took a deep breath and as she glanced downwards at the corpse’s lower body, she noticed that there was a tactical thigh holster on its right thigh with a handgun still holstered inside of it. She slowly took the firearm out of its holster and turned it over in her hands as she inspected it. “Let’s see…a Smith & Wesson M&P? Haven’t seen one of these in a while…full-size…four and a quarter inch barrel length…forty caliber Smith & Wesson…good choice…fifteen plus one capacity…well, this should be useful,” she mumbled as she unstrapped the corpse’s holster and laid the holster and firearm down on the floor beside her. Following that, she checked the corpse’s pockets for a moment and found two spare magazines–both of which she laid out beside the gun and holster. She also managed to find a decent flashlight that she clipped to the left side of her belt after a moment’s thought so as to keep it on the opposite side of her body as her pistol.

“Maybe you should hit it with a crowbar just in case. You know; make sure that it’s not going to get up? Seriously though, find anything interesting?”

Jane flinched at that and nearly drew her pistol before she recognized the voice and managed to calm her nerves down. “Hey there Josh and yeah. Managed to find a few things that might be useful. And speaking of which, I did find something in particular that might be useful for you right now,” she said as she picked up the handgun and holster from the floor and held them out towards her friend.

“Oh?” Joshua asked, glancing downward as he placed his pipe wrench in the messenger bag that was at his side. As he brought his eyes back up though, Jane noticed that Joshua let his eyes take in the blood-soaked sight of her for a moment before taking the offered firearm and holster. “Nathan, thanks,” he said as he strapped the holster on his own body around his right thigh. He spent a moment or two adjusting the straps and latches before he slid the M&P in it–making sure that the first round was chambered already and checking the safety again.

“Don’t mention it,” Jane replied as she got back to her feet before grabbing the spare magazines from the floor and holding them out towards her friend, “oh, and here’s two extra magazines that I found while I was looking.”

Joshua nodded as he took the offered magazines and stuffed one in his pocket and the other in his bag. “Anything else?”

“Just a flashlight. Anyway, let’s get going before _they_ catch us here.”

“All right, got any suggestions for where in the hell for us to head to next?”

“How about the school? Maybe we could find some help there or at least some more supplies,” Jane suggested, figuring that the entire rest of the town had probably either been abandoned or overrun by then considering the amount of time that it had been since she was last there.

“Well, it’s definitely the closest building…worth a shot, I suppose.”

 

~6:38 p.m.~

 

“Well, at least it’s still standing…I guess that’s a good sign,” Jane muttered as she stopped her third generation Lexus LS in front of the building and reached into the backseat, grabbing her Remington Model 8 rifle and a box of .32 Remington hollow points. She loaded rounds into the magazine until it was back up to its full fifteen-round capacity before reinserting the magazine and placing the box of ammunition in his pocket–sighing with relief as she didn’t see anyone anywhere nearby except for the two of them. From what she could tell, it looked like she had been right. Either the town had been completely abandoned once people had taken everything that wasn’t nailed down or they had fled in screaming terror and the zombies had followed. After a moment though, she saw what she thought were bomb craters scattered across what once was the cafeteria and the student parking lot and as her brain remembered the noise from earlier, she realized that those were indeed _bomb_ craters that she was currently looking at. Her mind quickly tried to attach an explanation to what she had just seen, but in the end it could only form one coherent thought and that was: why the hell was somebody dropping bombs on them?

“Hey, what about your…what did you call it? A…‘bug out bag’?”

Jane looked over at her friend in stunned surprise for a moment before she realized that Joshua was trying to focus on their survival instead of the craters just outside. “Wha–oh, it’s locked up in the trunk. It should be fine until we get done looking around,” she replied as she climbed out of the car and slung the rifle over her shoulder.

“If you say so. Although, if something goes wrong then I’m not planning on being the one that has to replace everything that we lost.”

“Josh, shh…”

“Hmm?”

“I think that somebody else might have had the same idea as us,” she said, pointing towards a vehicle that rested against the far side of the faculty parking lot.

“Could just be an abandoned vehicle, but whatever. If you really think that someone’s still alive, then let’s head inside and start looking.”

“All right,” she replied as they carefully made their way towards the front door of their school–making sure to keep as quiet as possible just in case.

The two of them glanced through each room in the high school section of the main building…or at least what was left of it. All the lights were off just like the rest of the town and the surrounding neighborhood. The hallways and rooms looked like they had been ransacked, but that was probably just the end result of the shrapnel and shockwaves from the bombs.

“Hey Josh…”

“Hmm?”

“We’re screwed, aren’t we?”

“Just keep looking.”

With that said, the two of them continued to search and eventually found themselves at the door to what had originally been the school library. Jane slowly drew and readied her pistol as she saw Joshua nod at her before the two of them slowly opened the door and stepped inside the library. They glanced around for a moment at the empty library before Jane heard something shuffling about behind the counter. Before she could even stop herself, she had fired off three rounds into the row of books behind the counter and the next thing that she knew was Joshua yanking the pistol out of her hands as screaming issued from behind the counter for a moment followed by a second voice yelling.

“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

“Michael?” Joshua called out over his shoulder before he suddenly hugged Jane tightly and whispered for a moment to try to calm her down, “Nathan, it’s okay. It wasn’t one of those things and you missed anyway. You missed. You didn’t hurt anybody.”

“Josh? Nathan with you?”

“Yeah,” Joshua called back as he let go of Jane and handed her pistol back, “anybody else back there with you, Michael?”

"Just Nicole."

Not a moment later, the two of them emerged from behind the counter: Michael giving them a quick wave with a bloodied wooden baseball bat in his off-hand and Nicole smiling just a little at them even though she was covered in what was presumably someone else’s blood and holding a fire ax.

“Hey, glad to see that you two are still alive,” Michael called out.

“Yeah, same here,” Jane replied, waving back as she holstered her gun.

“All right, this makes four of us…so what are we supposed to do now? The world’s gone to hell and we’re still here after all.”

“Come on Josh, we’ve been in way worse situations than this,” Jane replied, grimacing after a moment as she saw Joshua glare at her, “…okay, so we really haven’t been in a worse situation before now.” She sighed to herself and ran her hand through her hair absent-mindedly for a moment as she tried to think of what they should do now.

“So…has anyone been bitten?” Nicole asked, tucking a few strands of her blood-drenched shoulder-length brown hair behind her ear.

“What?” Jane asked, blinking in surprise as she heard Nicole’s words, “oh! Umm, no. Neither of us has been bit.”

“Good…I was just making sure since those _things_ out there, they _are_ zombies, right?”

“Trust me Nicole, if they were then I’d be having the time of my life and seeing how high of a kill count that I could get by shooting at them from my roof but they’re not. I don’t know what they are but they are _not_ voodoo zombies or the walking dead. They act like them, but they’re not them. I do know two things though: one, that they’re not human beings anymore and two, anything that would kill a normal human being will work on them as well,” Jane replied.

“Well that helps a lot…but still: what are they?”

“I don’t know. Government experiment gone wrong? Gone horribly right? A biological weapon engineered by an enemy? Nature’s way of telling us that we’re screwed? I don’t know!”

“What about the bombs earlier? Have you two heard anything about that?”

“Nothing, absolutely nothing,” Joshua replied to Michael’s question as he collapsed into one of the library’s chairs.

“Although, if I had to guess, there’s probably one of two reasons for those bombs earlier. One, our government is trying to get rid of this problem by dropping bombs on all infected areas, wiping all zombies out along with any witnesses and survivors…or two, if this is a biological weapon, then those bombs are probably stage two of somebody’s plan to get rid of the U.S. Before anybody asks though, no, I don’t think that anybody’s dropping nukes on us for three main reasons. One, did anybody see a mushroom cloud in the distance? No, I didn’t think so. So, those bombs that all of us heard dropping were probably nothing more than normal bombs being used to carpet bomb the area or maybe cruise missiles or maybe rockets…but definitely not nukes. Two, there’s a Geiger counter out in my car and I haven’t seen it register anything besides background radiation yet,” she explained, gesturing towards Michael–specifically the lit-up screen of his cellphone, “Three, no EMP blast from a possible nuke. Umm, yeah, the power grid’s knocked offline around here and most of the various back-up generators seem to be off too–probably were destroyed by the bombs when they started falling–, but nothing’s actually _fried_ or anything like that.”

“Well, at least that means that we still have a chance…so, how are we going to handle this?”

“I really don’t know, Nicole. My original strategy was getting the hell out of here, but I’m not so sure anymore…especially since they could be anywhere by now. Maybe it’d be best if we decided to hole up either somewhere here in town or at one of our houses for the time being.”

“How about here?”

“Maybe…by the looks of things, almost everybody else in the entire county’s already fled or been killed and we didn’t meet any zombies when we were coming here…but, if things get any worse, I can’t see any way that we could use the school as a decent fort. There’s just too many windows and too many doors unless…”

“Even so…it couldn’t hurt for one night, could it?” Nicole asked as she glanced out a nearby window at their hometown of Bruce–no, _ghost_ town now.

“No, I don’t suppose so and I might have just the plan for getting us through the night,” Jane replied after a moment’s thought as she checked her wristwatch and realized that it was already going on eight o’clock at night. “…great, just great…all right then, we’ll use the school as a safe house for tonight and decide how to handle things in the morning. Josh, Michael; I need you two to do a few things. First, find a ladder to get us up on the roof and then find a good spot for us to stay for the night up there. Even if they come here tonight, they won’t be able to reach us up on the roof thank goodness,” she stopped for a moment to catch her breath before turning towards Nicole, “Nicole, you’re with me. I’ve got some supplies in my car that’ll get all of us through the night.” The moment that she finished saying that, she turned around and left before any of them could give an objection to what she had just said.

“Hey, Nathan! Hey, wait up!” Nicole called out as she caught up to her friend, “since when have you been such a take-charge person?”

“Shh! Nicole, keep quiet…just because we didn’t see any zombies earlier that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any here somewhere,” she whispered as they walked into the front parking lot and approached her car, “I really don’t know…I kind of just let myself get caught up in the moment I suppose.”

“Sorry…and, well, just don’t get too caught up in the moment, Nathan,” she warned as she waited for her to open the trunk only to stare at its contents once she opened it, “my god…”

“It’s not that impressive,” she replied, scanning over the contents herself: a single full-sized duffle bag, a box of bottles of water containing twenty-four total, two jugs of gasoline, and three blankets rolled up against the side of the trunk. “Mind holding these for a second?” she asked and waited for Nicole’s ‘okay’ before handing the three blankets to her as she grabbed anything else that she thought that they might need. In the end, she decided on just the blankets and a couple of bottles of water. She split the items as equally as she could with Nicole and headed back towards the building as soon as she locked the car back up just in case–hoping to find Michael and Joshua again.

###

“Hey!”

“Hmm?” Jane asked as she stopped in her tracks and glanced up to see Joshua looking down at them from the edge of the roof, “oh, hey. Mind tossing the ladder down here so that we can get up there?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Thanks,” Jane said after a moment as the ladder–an extension ladder by the looks of it–was lowered over the edge of the roof until she was able to grab the bottom of it and get it situated right so that it would be balanced on the ground. “Ladies first,” she joked to Nicole; smiling after a moment as she heard Nicole’s chuckle as she began to climb although Jane remained behind.

“Hey Nathan, aren’t you coming up too?”

“Yeah Michael, I’ll be up in just a bit.”

“One thing though: how are we going to handle things tonight?”

“What?” she asked as she passed her portion of the supplies up the ladder to Michael.

“Are we just going to all sleep at the same time and be killed in our sleep by some scavenger later? Are we going to keep watch in shifts? What?”

“We’ll sleep in shifts,” she replied as she began to walk away towards the main entrance to the school, “you guys can decide the order. I’m going to scout out the rest of the school right quick.”

“Nathan, with what’s happened…don’t you think that you might need some backup?”

“I’ll be all right, Nicole,” she replied before taking her pistol out of its holster and grasping it in both of her hands as she reached the entrance, “be back soon, you guys.”

###

“Thank God that’s over with,” Jane muttered to herself as she checked the last room in the school before making her way back outside to the roof.

“Hey.”

“Hmm?” she asked, glancing around before settling her eyes on the blond-haired figure at the end of the hallway. “Oh, hey Michael. Something up?”

“Besides the obvious? No, not really. Nicole just asked me to come and see how you were doing.”

“I’m doing fine,” she said, walking right past Michael without another glance.

“Oh…well, we managed to figure out an order for tonight: Josh first, then Nicole, me, and let you take the last shift of the night.”

“All right, thanks for telling me…and I’ll be right back. I just realized that I missed a room earlier while I was scouting out the building,” she lied as an idea came to her mind.

“Oh, okay. See ya back on the roof then,” Michael said as the two of them went their separate ways.

###

“ _Come on, come on. There has to be something in here,_ ” Jane thought to herself as she continued to tear through the drawers in the desk in the principal’s office. She slammed another one of the drawers back in place and was just about to give up as she tried to open another one only for her to realize that it was locked. “ _This has got to be it,_ ” she thought as she reached for her crowbar on her belt and wedged it into the top of the locked drawer. She tried it a couple of times before finally hearing the lock give way and sighed in relief as she managed to get the drawer open and glanced at the two objects inside.

“Yes, finally,” she said out-loud–nearly forgetting what kind of situation that they were currently in–as she carefully held the first object in her hands–shivering a little at how cold the steel was–and inspected it. “…Smith & Wesson Model three twenty-seven…eight round capacity…two and a half inch barrel version…three fifty-seven caliber Magnum…this should definitely do for a while,” she whispered as she made sure that no rounds were chambered before she slipped it into her back pocket. She grabbed the other object, which turned out to be a small ammunition box and smiled as she saw the words ‘.38 Special’ and ‘50 Cartridges’ typed on the front of the box. She opened the box itself and could have sworn that she felt her right eye twitch when she realized that it had really been too good to be true. There were only twenty cartridges left in the entire box. “Well…at least twenty is better than nothing,” she reasoned as she slipped the small box into the only pocket that she hadn’t filled with anything yet before leaving the office and heading back towards the outside of the building.

###

“Hey, Nathan.”

“Hmm?” she questioned as she heard her name being whispered as soon as she got on the roof and finished hoisting the ladder back up, laying it out on the roof.

“Over here.”

“Oh, hey Nicole,” she whispered back after a moment as she realized that it had actually been Nicole and saw her sitting on the far edge of the roof gesturing for Jane to join her. She smiled a little as she walked over towards her and sat down next to her. “Sorry about taking so long, but as far as I can tell, we should be all right for the night. No surprises or anything like that,” she said, making sure to keep her voice at a whisper, “so, anything happen while I was gone?”

“Besides what Michael already told you? No, nothing else happened.”

“Oh…hey Nicole?”

“Hmm?”

“There’s, umm, there’s something that we need to talk about.”

“What?”

“I kind of need your help…I need someone that I can trust…no, no, I trust all of you, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I…I don’t know what will be out there when the sun rises tomorrow. It may be that all of this is just a bad dream. It may be that this is our reality now…I don’t know, but what I do know is that I need someone that I can _trust_ to have my back and help get all of us through this. Josh’s too prone to bouts of moodiness and depression when something goes wrong and can only see one course of action. Michael’s…well, Michael. I’m a survivalist, but I absolutely suck when it comes to being a leader or anything involving teamwork…and knowing my luck, if I started making all the decisions then I’d probably wind up getting one of us killed…so Nicole, could you…”

“Sure Nathan.”

“Thanks, and oh, before I forget,” she replied as she took the empty revolver out of her pocket and held it out towards Nicole along with the box of ammunition that she had found, “here, take it.”

“A Smith & Wesson Model three twenty-seven?” she questioned, her eyes widening as she glanced down at the firearm, “but…”

“Let me guess: you don’t know how to handle a firearm? Don’t worry, I’ll teach–”

“No, that’s not it, Nathan. I know how to shoot. I’m just surprised is all…although, I doubt that I should be considering what’s already happened. So, thanks for the gun. I really appreciate it,” she explained as she took the revolver and ammunition.

“Oh okay…and no problem,” Jane said as she got up from where she had been sitting and began to walk towards where the blankets had been laid out, “I’m going to grab some sleep before it’s my turn. See you in the morning.”

“Okay…um, good night then, Nathan.”

“Night Nicole,” she replied as she laid down her crowbar, pistol, and rifle next to the blanket before lying down on the blanket and closing her eyes for a moment before she realized something. “ _Damn it, I nearly forgot about my glasses,_ ” she thought to herself as she took her eyeglasses off and laid them alongside her crowbar and handgun. Sadly, she hadn’t had a chance to put her contacts in that morning when their world came crashing down and even though glasses weren’t the best thing to wear when fighting…well, she’d just have to find some way to manage. At the same time though, she also needed to find some way to deal with her binder issue. It had been fine so far, but if they had to start fighting for their lives hours on end then she was going to be in trouble very quickly.


	3. Chapter 03

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My name is Nicole. I was a freshman in high school just a few days before our world came crashing down. Now, I'm just trying to survive like everyone else...even if that means killing to survive. I've already taken my first life after all. Raised my fire ax up and swung as hard as I could--it felt so easy at the time. That...that doesn't make me a bad person though, does it? Please...I need to know.

~March 11, 2008~

~9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.~

 

“Oh, _shit_ …” Jane muttered to herself as she put her glasses on just to make sure that she was seeing what she thought that she was seeing and paled when she realized that she was right. She scurried as quickly as she could back over to where everybody was still sleeping and began to shake each of them by the shoulder as quickly as she could. “Come on you guys, wake up. Nicole? Michael? Josh? Wake up,” she whispered urgently.

“Hmm? What’s going on?” Nicole mumbled sleepily as she rubbed at her eyes.

“They’re _here_.”

“What, but–” she began, her eyes opening wide and her heart beginning to race as she looked towards where he was pointing, “my god…”

“Yeah,” Jane replied simply as she went back to trying to wake up Michael and Joshua, “come on you two, wake the hell up.”

“Argh…five more minutes…”

“What…what Josh said…”

“Come on, you two!” Nicole and Jane both wound up yelling at the same time and slapping both Joshua and Michael across the face to get them up.

“What the hell!?”

“That!” Nicole said–a little louder than necessary–as she pointed towards the opposite edge of town where a huge mob of zombies could be seen coming from.

“We need a plan since I’m sure that they’ve heard us now since we had to yell to wake you two up,” Jane accused as she tried to judge the distance between them, the vehicles, and the zombies. “ _All right…we should have plenty of time to get to the vehicles and get out of here before they reach us._ ”

“Nathan, look.”

“Oh, great,” she muttered in response as she saw a second mob already beginning to surround their vehicles, “wait, maybe…”

“What are you thinking of?”

“Hand me one of those bottles of water that we brought up here last night.”

“Here you go.”

“Thanks,” she replied as she took the bottle and walked out onto the edge of the rooftop. She waited to see if any of the zombies would notice her but they didn’t so she decided to see if her idea would work. She pulled her arm back as far as she could and let the bottle of water fly–the bottle impacting the ground after a moment and giving off a slight echo for a moment.

Almost as if they had a hive mind, the entire mob that was near the vehicles descended on the bottle of water–ripping and tearing at pavement and air alike almost as if they were tearing at an invisible human body for a moment before resuming their wandering around the area.

“All right, it’s just like in those old movies. They react to sound, not sight. I might just have a plan.”

“Well, let’s hear it.”

“All right. All three of you, get ready to move the ladder into position and climb down onto the ground. After that, I need you guys to get in the vehicles and get ready to burn rubber. As soon as you guys are ready to burn rubber though, I’m going to need Michael to drive his SUV over there,” she said, pointing towards the lowest visible section of the roof, “for my plan to work.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be keeping them busy in the meantime,” she replied to Nicole’s question, smiling a little as she picked up her rifle, pistol, and crowbar. “They react to sound so I’m going to give them plenty. I’ll fire a couple of shots at them to cover the sound of your footsteps from up here so that they’ll be concentrating on me instead of you three.”

“Hey…”

“Don’t worry; I’ll be right behind you. I’ve got a plan, after all,” she said, tossing her car keys to Joshua.

“You…” Joshua began as he caught the tossed keys, “…just don’t let them back you into a corner that you can’t fight your way out of, all right?”

“Got it. Now, get going before that other mob reaches us or there’ll be too many for even this plan to work,” she said as she headed for the opposite edge of the school’s roof–running alongside the edge of the roof as she lined up a couple of shots with her pistol on a few of the ones that were wandering around to hopefully catch the entire mob’s attention. “That’s it…come on now, you bastards. Plenty of these rounds to go around,” she muttered as she dropped onto a lower section of the roof and fired off a few more rounds, catching a few with head shots and the majority with chest shots as she noticed nearly the entire mob following the sound of her shots and joining the crowd that was less than twenty to twenty-five feet directly below her. “All right, perfect,” she said as she saw everybody make it to the vehicles and heard both start up without any problems, “now, I’ve just got to get in position.” She fired off her tenth and final round before she holstered the pistol and made a run for it across the rooftop towards the low area that she had pointed out to Michael earlier.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Right here!” she yelled as she dropped from the edge of the roof and landed on the top of Michael’s SUV–taking ahold of the roof rails and laying down on her stomach–, “go! Go!”

“Got it!”

###

“Okay, that should be far enough, Michael. You can stop now,” she called out as she rapped her knuckles against the sunroof of the SUV.

“You got it, Nathan.”

“All right–whoa!” she yelled as Michael stopped quicker than she expected and nearly threw her off of the roof rails. She managed to hang on though even through the pain that surged through her arms at the quick stop and waited until the vehicle was fully stopped before she jumped down from the rails, landing on the cold asphalt. She grimaced a little as she felt a light surge of pain spike through her lower legs from when she had dropped from the roof of the school onto the SUV earlier. “Note to self: never ever attempt to use a vehicle as a cushion or attempt an outside ride on one ever again,” she mumbled to herself, her breath ragged, as she waited for the pain to pass before even daring to try to walk again.

“So, we got a plan yet?” Joshua asked–still inside Jane’s car, but having already moved back over into the passenger seat.

“What? Oh…well, I did have three in mind before now, but one’s already been shot to hell: the possibility of staying back in Bruce. So, the only two options that I can see are either we fortify and barricade ourselves in one of our homes…or we get out of here and try to either meet up with some other survivors or at least try to survive and maybe find out what the hell’s happened here. I mean, each one has its advantages and disadvantages and I…I just don’t know which we should do.”

“Well, how about we vote on it?”

“That…could work,” she agreed after a moment as she stood back up straight and walked towards her car, “all right, who says that we should fortify one of our homes? Just Josh? That just leaves getting out of this ghost town…so Michael, Nicole, and me. Guess that we’re leaving then.” She reached the car after another moment or two and got back in the driver’s seat. She checked the gauges on the dashboard and smiled just a little as she noticed that everything was still working properly. With that done, she opened up the console between the front two seats and took out an object and a cable that were an exact match for the object resting on her dashboard and the cable that was connected to it. She held her free arm outside the window and motioned for Michael to bring his vehicle up beside them.

“Hey, something up?”

“Just got something for you, Michael,” she replied as she handed the object and cable over to Nicole, watching as Michael tried to get a better look at the device.

“Hey, is that a–”

“Yeah, it’s a walkie-talkie along with a car charger. We need a way to keep in contact and I don’t want to rely on using cell phones too much right now…especially with the possibility that the nearest cell towers beyond here could have been blown to smithereens already.”

“So Nathan, two questions: where are we headed first and who’s on point?”

“I suppose that we’ll head to Oxford first, Nicole. It’s only about forty minutes from here and if we get lucky it’ll be a straight shot all the way there. As for who leads, I really don’t care. I guess Michael can if he wants to.”

“All right, here we go.”

###

“Ah, hell…”

“This…this…”

“ _Nathan? Josh? Are–are you two seeing this?_ ”

“This is Nathan, and yeah…we’re seeing it too,” she replied as she talked into the walkie-talkie. She couldn’t believe the sight in front of her. Back in Banner, she hadn’t seen any destruction and Bruce had looked like nothing more than just a ghost town with a couple of craters. Oxford though was a completely different sight: most of the downtown area–especially the Square–looked like it had been carpet-bombed with craters visible, bombed-out shells of former buildings, and what looked like…“Josh, there’s a set of binoculars in my car’s trunk…could you get them for me?” she quietly asked as she stepped out of the car and walked to the edge of the overpass that they had stopped on to see what the damage to the city had been.

“Here.”

“Thanks,” she replied as she took the binoculars and adjusted the focus as she scanned the hellish sight laid out before them. “ _Damn…there’s really nothing left, but I wonder…the far side of Oxford…if it hasn’t been ransacked, then maybe…and also, I don’t see any zombies anywhere so maybe…maybe they’ve already left and moved on to other areas…_ ”

“Can I borrow those?”

“Oh, sure,” she replied as she handed the binoculars over to Michael and decided to speak her idea. “Hey guys, umm…since most of downtown Oxford is, well, you know…I was trying to think of some places that we could rest and stay at for possibly the next couple of days before we move on as well as some places to stock up on supplies. One of the places that I came up with was possibly Wal-Mart if it’s still standing and hasn’t been ransacked yet. I know, I know; it sounds stupid, but hear me out. Normally I wouldn’t even give Wal-Mart a second thought in this kind of situation before moving on to somewhere else but think about what’s happened. All of this,” she stopped for a moment as she waved her hand in front of her to indicate the hellish sight of downtown Oxford, “just happened yesterday morning. Look at all of the damage. What do you think most of the survivors did as soon as they saw all of this and realized that freaking _zombies_ were walking about? I’m betting that some probably boarded up their homes–possibly committing suicide–while the rest probably got the hell out of here while the getting was still good. If I had to guess, the ones that are left probably haven’t even raided Wal-Mart or anywhere else around here because they’re too scared to leave the safety of their own homes and safe houses.”

“Still, Wal-Mart?”

“If he’s right though, we could get plenty of supplies.”

“So, we all for it?”

“Yeah!”

###

“Well, I guess that every dog really does have its day. It looks like you might have been right,” Joshua said.

“Yeah, well let’s just hope that I am right about this,” she said as they got out of her car and she made sure to lock it behind them. The parking lot itself was completely vacant except for a few small craters here and there. She watched Joshua go and meet up with Nicole and Michael and began to follow after a moment, mentally going over a checklist of what she had on her person. “ _All right…wallet, keys, flashlight, cell phone, wristwatch, crow-bar, pistol, a box of twenty-two hollow points, a box of thirty-two Remington, and a rifle…yeah, I’m_ so ready _to take on an apocalypse…_ ”

“Hey Nathan, what’s taking so long?”

“Huh? Oh, sorry,” she apologized as she realized that they were waiting for her at the entrance now. She caught up to them after a moment and smiled with relief as she saw the automatic doors open for them, indicating that at least part of the building’s power grid was still online. She’d definitely have to remember to disable the automatic doors later though and find the keys to lock all of the other exits as well to keep anybody from sneaking in on them if they decided to stay any longer than necessary. “Umm, any other survivors here? The walking dead?” she called out, grimacing at her choice of words before sighing with relief after a moment as she didn’t hear a response–not even footsteps or any other kind of noise. She turned around to face the others and smiled as a thought came to her mind to try to lighten the mood, “so…an abandoned Wal-Mart and us: nothing but a bunch of teens…”

“Way ahead of you,” Michael said, grinning just a little as he disappeared between two of the aisles.

“Saw that coming,” Joshua deadpanned after a moment before he left too.

“So, what are we all going to do after this, Nathan?” Nicole questioned as the two of them wandered around the store.

“Well, the last time that I checked, there were a couple of good gun shops here in Oxford and I was thinking that we could grab some equipment at one of them…after that, I was thinking about Rowan Oak.”

“Rowan Oak? William Faulkner’s home?”

“Yeah, the one and only. I was thinking that we could stay there for a while, get our bearings, and get some practice in before we continued on our way. There’s a privacy wall that Faulkner built around the property that should keep those zombies away from all of us for the time being. Overall, it should be a fairly safe location.”

“Sounds like a great idea,” she agreed as they found themselves in the clothing department and shared a laugh as they glanced down at their own blood-stained and torn clothes.

“Got it,” Jane said after a moment before Nicole could even say anything and walked over to the men’s department on the far right. She was fairly sure that she knew what Nicole was thinking right then and also knew what she herself was thinking: they had been walking around this entire time looking like refugees from a horror movie–okay, so they were missing the perfect hair and makeup of horror movie stars along with the skinny or muscular body builds, but still. “Although, considering what all of us have been through…that’s probably not that far from the truth,” she reasoned as she looked through a rack of shirts that were on ‘sale’, tossing a few that she didn’t like on the floor. Eventually, she found a few things that she didn’t hate and ducked inside the fitting room over in the bra section of the store to change. After all, there was no way in hell that she was going to take her clothes off where Nicole, Michael, or even Joshua could possibly see her and notice the binder that she was wearing. She took a deep breath and went to work on removing her bloody and brain matter splattered clothing until she was just in her binder and boxers. She tossed her old clothes in the corner and went to work on peeling the binder off of her body only to wince as she saw the deep red impressions that it had managed to leave over her upper body. She dropped the binder to the floor as she leaned against the wall and tried to give her body a moment’s respite from her binder.

After a few minutes though, she knew that she couldn’t stall the inevitable any longer and grabbed the binder, slowly pulling it on followed by her new clothes. Once she had everything on and adjusted, she glanced at her reflection in the mirror. “Gray t-shirt, loose fitting white dress shirt, pair of steel-toe boots, cargo pants, flashlight clipped onto my belt, crowbar on my belt too, holstered pistol, a rifle on my back, leather jacket, and one black straw fedora,” she mumbled to herself as she buttoned up the dress shirt and zipped the leather jacket up before she walked out of the fitting room, “at least it’s a practical outfit considering the situation.”

“Wow, look at you.”

“Oh, hey Josh,” she replied recognizing her friend’s voice just from that sarcastic tone. She turned to face him after a moment and wasn’t surprised at all when she saw her friend’s new outfit: boonie hat, white t-shirt, pipe wrench, blue jeans, holstered M&P handgun, zipped up flight jacket, and a pair of steel-toe boots.

“Hey, hey, check this out!”

“What? Huh, that’s actually not a bad look on you, Michael,” she said after a moment as she saw Michael jogging towards them and showing off his new outfit: a gray windbreaker jacket, wooden baseball bat in hand, red polo shirt, blue jeans, and a pair of classic cowboy boots.

“Knew it,” Michael replied, “by the way, my vehicle’s completely full now so if we get anything else, it’s going to have to go in your car, Nathan.”

“All right, cool. Well, let’s head back to the entrance and see if Nicole’s waiting for us,” she said as the three of them headed back towards the entrance.

“So, where have you three been?”

“Looking for you, what else?” she replied with a small laugh–and nearly with a whistle too, but she managed to stop herself before her mouth could do _that_ –as she saw Nicole’s combination of a hoodie, fire ax, Model 327 revolver, blue jeans, and hiking boots.

“So, everybody ready?”

“I guess so; we’ve got new outfits and plenty of supplies so we should be ready.”

“All right, great, now we just need to get some equipment instead of more supplies and we should be set for a while. There’s a gun store just a couple of miles down the road that should hopefully still be in one piece.”

“Hopefully?”

“Yeah Josh, hopefully…because I’m not sure about how much longer this streak of well…good luck will continue.”

“Well, maybe it’ll last until all of this blows over,” Nicole said after a moment as they walked out of Wal-Mart and began to get back into their vehicles.

###

“Damn…”

“Holy shit…”

“Whoa…”

“Did I die and go to heaven? No wait, there’s not enough guns.”

The four of them couldn’t help but stare as they caught sight of the inside of the gun shop and the small number of items strewn about on the floor and on the mostly empty shelves: firearms, bags, ammunition, etc.

“So, who votes that Michael starts grabbing some gun bags and cases while the rest of us start looting?” Joshua asked and saw both Jane and Nicole raise their hands, “well, sorry Michael.”

“So, where should we start first?” Jane asked as she tried to come up with a mental checklist of what they needed.

“Well, we need armor, gear, and guns.”

“Right, so…Josh, mind grabbing some elbow pads, kneepads, shooting glasses, and ear muffs for all of us? If nothing else, the elbow and kneepads will help protect at least a little against bites–among other things, am I right? Besides that, the ear muffs and shooting glasses could possibly come in handy later on,” she said before glancing around at the firearms still in the store for a moment, “Nicole and I will take care of guns. We’ll get all of the ones that we can and spread them out on the counter. After that, we’ll see about what else we need to grab.”

“Hey Josh, one other thing: when Michael gets done grabbing his stuff, could you guys grab some speed loaders, bandoleers, slings, and cartridge belts if they have any along with ammunition for any guns that we put on that counter?” Jane asked, gesturing towards the counter over by the wall.

“Make sure to grab all of the hollow point ammunition first though, all right? That stuff tears flesh apart and would probably be the best thing for taking those zombies out.”

“Yeah, yeah. No problem,” Joshua said as he walked away, leaving Nicole with Jane–who was currently on the floor inspecting a couple of handguns.

“Hey, check out what I’ve managed to find so far,” Jane mentioned, motioning for Nicole to join her for a moment, “it seems as if whoever the last person was that ransacked this place…they–they wound up actually _sorting_ the leftover guns for whatever reason. It looks like most of the rifles, shotguns, and handguns were all tossed into their own pile…weird, right?”

“Well, considering that we’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse right now…I don’t really think that the word ‘weird’ really applies anymore–especially when you’re talking about some random person’s quirk.”

“Yeah, I suppose that you’re right,” she conceded as she held up each gun and began to name them off as good as she could, “a Ruger Redhawk revolver in forty-five caliber Colt, a Glock Seventeen–third generation model if I’m not mistaken about the design–in nine millimeter, and a Browning Hi-Power in nine millimeter…all three with laser grips.”

“Laser grips? Hey, those will definitely be useful.”

“Yeah, I mean I still trust scopes and iron sights more than laser sights, but for what’s out there…I definitely can’t disagree with how useful those laser sights will be.”

“So, think that we should start splitting up some of the equipment right now or wait until we get to Rowan Oak?”

“How about now?” she replied, going through a couple of motions with the Redhawk to test the balance on it.

“No complaints from me,” Nicole replied back as she picked up the Glock and gripped it in her hand–getting a feel for it and nearly smiling at how strangely _right_ it felt.

“Somehow, I just knew that you were going to go for that Glock,” she mentioned as she made a mental reminder to hand the Browning pistol over to Michael later.

“So, what’s next: shotguns or rifles? I say shotguns–”

“And leave the rifles for last? Sounds like a plan,” Jane finished for her as they placed the three handguns on the counter before heading over towards the shotguns.

“Come on, only three shotguns?”

“Well, Josh’s not a close-up and personal kind of guy so three should be enough for us anyway, right?”

“Yeah, I suppose,” she said, picking up each one and handing it to Jane to carry back to the counter, “Winchester Model nineteen twelve pump-action, Remington Model eleven hundred semi-automatic, and a Browning Auto-Five semi-automatic with a shell sling that looks like it can hold fifteen shells…you can check to make sure but I think that all three are twelve gauge models.”

“They are,” she confirmed as she placed the last shotgun on the counter before heading over towards the pile of rifles. “Now, let’s see what we have here,” she said as she began to inspect and hand each one over to Nicole, “Winchester Model seventy bolt-action sporting rifle in three oh eight Winchester with a telescopic sight, Remington Model seven hundred P bolt-action rifle also in three oh eight Winchester with a telescopic sight…hey, here’s a rifle for you, Nicole: a Ruger Mini fourteen in two twenty-three Remington. Man, you could probably go to town on those zombies with that rifle,” she said, laughing a little as she watched Nicole aim with the iron sights on the Mini-14 at several spots on the far wall for a moment.

“You’re right, Nathan. I think that I just might keep this,” she said, smiling a little as she slung the rifle over her shoulder and let it come to a rest against her back to see how it felt. After a moment, she nodded to herself and turned back to see Jane all but drooling over the last rifle in the pile. “Let me guess: found your soul mate?” she joked as she glanced at the rifle in Jane’s hands.

“No–I mean, no, but this–this is impressive,” Jane managed to say as she inspected every last inch of the rifle. “Armalite AR ten target rifle model…Harris bipod…ArmaLite quad rail….seven sixty-two NATO caliber…two-point sling…top of the line red dot sight,” she said, seemingly mesmerized at the sight of the rifle.

“So, we’ve got guns, Josh’s taking care of some of the other stuff, and…” Nicole began, glancing over her shoulder to get a look at the counter for a moment, “Michael’s currently placing everything including the guns into as many bags and cases as he can.”

“I wonder…hey Nicole, what do you think the chances are of this place having a room or a closet somewhere in the back for special merchandise?” Jane asked as she got to her feet and slung the rifle over her back–a flicker of surprise appearing on her face as she realized how much the rifle weighed compared to her Remington.

“I don’t know; let’s go see,” she replied as the two of them headed behind the counter only to find a locked door. “Good thing that we’ve got a crowbar,” she said after a moment and saw Jane nod as she wedged the crowbar in near the lock to make it easier to get it open.

“Okay Nicole, grip it near my hands and start pulling as hard as you can,” she said right before the two of them started pulling as hard as they could and eventually managed to get the door open. She placed the crowbar back in her belt as she glanced inside the doorway to see what was in the previously locked room–scratch that, ‘locked closet’–and couldn’t help but to whistle, “hello!”

“What is all of this?” Nicole asked, glancing at the several boxes that were stacked behind the locked door.

“Blackhawk,” Jane said as she read off the label on the side of one of the boxes before opening the nearest one, “…oh my god, Nicole! Pouches, chest rigs, vests, knives–check this stuff out!”

“Hey you two, Josh wanted me to tell you that we managed to find three speed loaders designed for three fifty-seven Magnum, a fifty round shotgun shell bandoleer, a cheek pad with room for eight rifle rounds, some laser grips for that Smith & Wesson pistol of his…what are you two staring–holy crap!”

“Yeah Michael, we know already,” Nicole replied as she and Jane began to open the boxes and pass some of the equipment to Michael so that he could pack it into the empty bags that were in his hands.

“Four pairs of light assault gloves–two full-fingered ones and two half-fingered gloves, and a couple of assault packs,” Jane named off as she tossed the now empty box out of the way after handing the equipment over to Michael.

“Got several holsters here. A couple of shoulder holsters, some thigh holsters, and even a couple of knife sheaths along with several fixed blade knives,” Nicole chimed in after a moment as she tossed the equipment to Michael–whom was currently grinning a little at the sight of all the tactical gear that he was being handed.

“Okay, last box,” Jane announced as she opened it up and began taking out what was in it, “oh, wow…check this out, you two: four Omega Phalanx Homeland Security vests.”

“‘Wow’ is right, Nathan,” Nicole said as she took one of the vests and began to put it on over her hoodie, “perfect fit.”

“Hey, don’t forget about me,” Michael complained as he grabbed one of the vests as well and began to put it on.

“I swear that this must be what it’s like for a kid in a candy store that’s giving away candy for free,” Jane said mostly to herself as she strapped herself into one of the remaining vests before tossing the last vest in one of the bags.

“Hey, you three about finished cleaning this place out?” Joshua asked as he approached them, “I’ve already got everything else loaded in the vehicles.”

“Yeah, we’re just finishing up here,” Michael said, grinning a little as he presumably tried to imagine himself facing down a zombie horde–vest loaded down with shells and boomstick in hand.

“All right, I’ll meet you guys outside then.”

“Well, let’s get going you two,” Nicole said, picking up one of the remaining bags and leaving–Michael copying her movements after a moment.

“I guess that we had better get to Rowan Oak before the sun sets,” Jane muttered to herself as she picked up the last bag and made her way out of the store only to hear Michael complaining.

“Sucks that we couldn’t find a crossbow…”

“…or any plates…even though they would be kind of useless in a way against zombies.”


	4. Chapter 04

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My name is Michael. Only a couple of days ago, I thought that my biggest worry was over what to do during Spring Break. Turns out, my biggest worries now are "how can I survive all of this?" and "how much ass can I kick?". So far, I've managed to survive everything that's been thrown at me with nothing more than a baseball bat at my side. It may be the end of the world, but that doesn't mean that we can't have some fun, right?

~March 11, 2008~

~3:00 p.m. – 5:50 p.m.~

 

“And here we are,” Jane announced as she got out of her car and knelt down in front of one of the brick pillars that bordered the actual gate on both sides to retrieve the key for the gate.

“Well, where’s the house? All I’m seeing are trees,” Michael complained from inside his vehicle.

“Trust me, as soon as we get our vehicles inside, you’ll see the house. There’s a path that leads from the gate up to the house and believe me when I say that it’s a quite a sight. Now, if I can ever find that stupid key,” she replied before smiling a little as her eyes caught sight of one brick in particular that seemed more worn than the rest…and looked a lot looser. She wedged her crowbar into the space and used it to pry the brick out enough so that she could grab it and remove it. “What? Where is it!?” she blurted out as she glanced into the empty space behind the brick and realized that it was completely empty. “ _Wait! Don’t tell me_ –” she thought as she flipped the brick over in her hands and noticed that the key was taped to the back. “ _Dave, you magnificent bastard,_ ” she thought with a smile as she took the key–dropping the brick to the ground–and unlocked the gate, allowing both vehicles through–Joshua driving hers. As both vehicles made it past the gate, she locked the gate behind them and pocketed the key before clambering over it and catching up with both vehicles–climbing back into hers after letting Joshua get back in the passenger seat.

“Whoa…”

“Yeah Josh, impressive, isn’t it?” she asked as they passed between the two lines of cedar trees that made up the sides of the brick lane and parked a few feet from the front steps. “ _Although…I had nearly forgotten how much this place reminded me of the farmhouse in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead…_ ” “Well, let’s get the equipment and supplies inside and get everything set up to turn this place into a real safe house for a while,” she said as she popped open her car’s trunk and began to take out the supplies that they still had left with Joshua’s help while Nicole and Michael handled the SUV.

It took them a few trips, but eventually they managed to get the supplies and equipment that they thought that they may need inside the house and stacked up right inside the foyer, which included a–

“What the hell? Did you really need to grab a flat-screen television while we were at Wal-Mart, Michael?”

“Well, yeah. I didn’t know if the campus had installed a TV in this house and I decided to grab it just in case. Besides, we need to be able to see what’s going on everywhere news-wise.”

###

“Nothing. Nothing. Nothing,” Jane muttered as she flicked through the channels on the television. It seemed as though no matter how many channels that she went through they were all having either ‘technical difficulties’ or were completely offline.

“ _This is–_ ”

“Hey Nathan, stop it right there!”

“ _–Elaine Hoffman reporting live from the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino down in Biloxi, Mississippi. Yesterday evening at two o’clock, we witnessed an outbreak here akin to ones that had been seen earlier in the day across northern Mississippi. The latest update that we have received from the White House is to warn everyone to stay in their homes and not to try to leave town no matter what…what? Okay, I understand. We have just received news that an official announcement from the White House will be televised shortly. Until then, we’ll–_ ”

Right at that moment, a bomb impacted somewhere off camera–killing the reporter and the cameraman at least–before the video feed was cut and replaced with a technical difficulties picture.

“…”

“That…”

“Yeah…” Jane muttered–trying to force what she had just seen out of her mind–as she flicked through a few more channels before stopping on one that was showing live footage from Washington and the current President speaking. “ _So, who is it this time? Attorney General? Secretary of Labor? Secretary of Homeland Security? Oh…now, it’s the Secretary of the Interior._ ”

“ _My fellow Americans, I have just been informed that we have been once again attacked on our own soil. It has not even been a decade since that horrible day when we watched helplessly as every last shred of security and safety that we believed that we had was taken from us in the blink of an eye. Now, it has happened again, but this time as a blaze of hellfire and disease across the Southern United States. Because of that, I am sad to inform all U.S. citizens that all infected states will be quarantined until we have resolved this issue. So please, I beg of you, remain in your homes and keep safe until we finish our retaliation and are able to provide support to all of you. God bless America and God be with each and every one of you…_ ”

“Yeah…that was definitely informative,” Joshua said sarcastically as he got up from his seat and left the room, muttering something about them having idiots and assholes for politicians.

“Well, can’t exactly disagree with him on that. So, if we’re quarantined, what are we going to do now? We can’t exactly leave Mississippi now.”

“Yeah, we’d probably get shot or mistaken as terrorists with how far down we’ve let this presidency take us…” Jane muttered as she suddenly felt her cell phone vibrating in her pocket. “ _Who could that be?_ ” she wondered as she took the cell phone out and saw whose name was listed as she hurriedly answered. “John? Is that you? Are you and Dave doing all right? Have either of you been bitten? Where are you?”

“ _This is–my name’s–there’s…”_ began a soft voice, which to Jane’s ear sounded like a little girl maybe about ten, or eleven years old at the most, that seemed about ready to crack from crying presumably.

“Umm…just calm down and take a deep breath,” she said, wondering how this girl had gotten John’s phone before she pressed the speakerphone button on her cell, “now, start from the beginning, okay?”

“ _Okay…my name is Jessi…Jessi Reynolds. My big brother goes to school here at Ole Miss and…um, he brought me here to show me around knowing how much I liked reading about the campus’ history…but then…those–those–_ ”

“Those things attacked, didn’t they?” she ventured.

“ _Ye–yes, they came in through the entrances, blocking off any way for us to escape, and…and tried to_ eat _us!_ ”

“ _And yet we didn’t see any zombies near the campus when we came here, so…_ ” she thought to herself before she decided to ask Jessi a question. “Jessi, can you hear them moaning or stumbling about or anything?”

“ _Yes…_ ”

“ _Damn it…I was hoping that maybe they had already left the campus,_ ” she thought as she glanced back at Nicole and Michael only to realize that they were listening just as intently as she was as well as looking…“ _Scared? No, they’re worried about her just like I am…_ ” she realized after a moment as a small smile came to her lips and she tried to add a brave tone to her voice. “Jessi, are you still there?”

“ _I’m…I’m still here…but, it sounds like they’re getting closer…I’m scared–I’m really scared,_ ” she whispered on the phone, the sounds of sobs underscoring each word.

“Shh…it’ll be okay. We’re coming for you, Jessi. Now, where are you?”

“ _In the, umm, Student Union building. I’m in some kind of office on the second floor–they’re here! They’re right outside!_ ”

“Jessi, listen to me! Find a hiding place in there! A closet, anything! Do it now and we’ll be right over!” she managed to say right before she heard what sounded like John’s cell dropping to the floor before she lost the connection. “Damn it,” she said as she put her phone back in her pocket and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“So, what’s the plan?”

“What?”

“The plan to rescue her, duh.”

“Well, we’ve got to get to that office somehow. I don’t know how many zombies there’ll be between here and the Student Union…and then we’ll have to contend with the ones inside as well as on the way back here.”

“What are you guys talking about? Did I miss something?” Joshua asked as he walked down the stairs and approached the three of them.

“Just that we’re about to head to the Student Union to rescue a survivor,” Michael replied as he grabbed his baseball bat from where he had set it down earlier.

“It’s a little girl, Josh. That’s why we’re doing this,” Jane clarified before she began to sort through the guns that they had looted from the gun store.

“Well, what are we waiting for then?”

“A plan so that we don’t get bitten or eaten,” Jane said as she examined a few of the guns.

“Hey you three, I might have a plan. Josh, you could stay here at Rowan Oak at the front gate. You would be in a perfect position to unlock and lock the gate back as we pass through each time so that we wouldn’t have to worry about losing time to do that. That’ll also put you in a great position to cover us when we’re coming back if they’re following us. As for us, Michael, you don’t mind me driving your vehicle, do you?”

“Go right ahead,” he answered, tossing his keys to her.

“All right, we’ll head out in Michael’s SUV and I’ll stop as close to the Student Union as I can. Nathan and Michael, you two will head inside, find her, and get her back to the vehicle. After that, we’ll get back here as soon as we possibly can. So, how does that sound, everybody?”

“Sounds great,” Jane said–actually surprised at Nicole’s ‘take-charge’ moment–before she handed a Winchester Model 70 bolt-action sporting rifle chambered in .308 Winchester over to Joshua. “Now, let’s head out. We don’t have another moment to lose,” she added as she grabbed what she thought that she might need–especially considering that Michael seemed to be only willing to take his baseball bat with them–: his crowbar, Ruger Redhawk revolver, AR-10 target rifle, two extra magazines of 7.62 NATO, and one pouch filled with .45 Colt cartridges. “All right, let’s go be a bunch of big damn heroes for a little girl!”

“Big damn heroes?”

“Right!”

“Let’s just get going, you three!”

###

“Okay Nicole, we’re counting on you to get us back in one piece and hopefully without a horde of zombies on our tails,” Jane said as she loaded six .45 Colt hollow point rounds into her revolver before placing it back into its holster at her side.

“Let me worry about that. You two just worry about getting that little girl out of there alive.”

“This is Michael and me that you’re talking about. Don’t worry, we’ll rescue her. Come on Michael, let’s go,” she said as the two of them climbed out of the SUV and headed straight for the Student Union, ignoring the small number of zombies that were just wandering around–making it to the front entrance without attracting any attention. “Michael, you lead and I’ll cover you. I’ll focus on the zombies and you focus on finding the office where she’s hiding,” she whispered as she unslung the rifle from her back and readied herself for whatever was on the other side of the glass doors.

“Got it,” he whispered back as he readied his baseball bat and slowly opened the door before plunging inside the darkened interior.

“ _Shit, they’re everywhere!_ ” Jane realized as her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she was able to make what looked like an entire mob spread throughout the ground floor. She glanced over at Michael and motioned towards the staircase. Michael nodded his head in agreement as the two of them made their way up the stairs, trying to keep their noise level as quiet as possible.

After a few minutes of searching and nearly being caught by several zombies, the two of them finally found a clue as to which office she was hiding in.

“Michael, look,” she whispered as she pointed at the glowing backlight of a cell phone on the floor in one of the offices through the glass pane on the door, “that’s John’s phone and look…there’s a closet in there.”

“Yeah, I see it. Cover me?”

“You got it,” she said as she saw Michael head inside the office and open the door of the closet. She watched through the open doorway as Michael managed to persuade the little girl–Jessi–to come out of the closet and smiled just a little as she watched her clamber onto Michael’s back so that he could carry her out of there faster.

“She’s safe. Now, let’s get out of here.”

“Right behind you,” she agreed as she noticed the grip that Jessi had around Michael’s neck as well as the smile on her face directed at the both of them–wordlessly telling them both thanks for saving her. “ _Don’t thank me yet. We’re not home-free until we get back to Rowan Oak,_ ” she thought as they finally managed to make it back to the entrance and left the Student Union behind them as they headed as fast as they could towards Michael’s SUV.

“You guys made it,” Nicole said as soon as they all managed to get inside before she took off–intent on heading back towards Rowan Oak as quickly as possible.

###

“Whew,” Jane said–dropping her guns and crowbar to the floor–as she collapsed onto a couch in the parlor and nearly laughed at the adrenaline rush that she was feeling from their rescue of Jessi. Even though they hadn’t had to fight back a single time; just being so close to those zombies and so close to the edge had definitely given her a rush that she really didn’t need right then.

“Umm…”

“Hmm?” she asked as she glanced to her left only to see the little girl–Jessi–sitting next to her on the couch and noticed for the first time the blood stains on her clothes, “something wrong?”

“No–no, I just wanted to say thank you mister for, you know.”

“Just call me Nathan. ‘Mister’ makes me sound old,” she said, actually smiling as she undid her vest and laid it on the edge of the couch before she pointed towards everybody in the parlor with them, “I’m not the only one that you should be thanking. After all, all I managed to do was watch Michael’s back and make sure that he got you out of there safely. Everybody here helped in his or her own way. Josh–”

“Hey.”

“–stayed here to make sure that we would still have a safe place to call home after we rescued you. Nicole–”

“Hi, how are you holding up?”

“–made sure that we had a way to get away from the building and back here in one piece. Michael–”

“How are you doing, Jessi?”

“–is the one that carried you out of that mess and made sure that if any of those zombies wanted you, then they would have to go through him and that bat of his,” Jane finished, laughing a little as she saw Michael show off to Jessi about what he would have done to those zombies with his bat.

“Michael, you can quit it with the heroics now,” Joshua said, a small smile appearing on his face before he continued, “she’s fast asleep.”

“So, what do you guys think happened?”

“Hmm?”

“With Jessi. She was alone in that office when Michael and I went inside the Student Union to rescue her. There was no sign of that brother of hers or anyone else anywhere nearby except those zombies.”

“Does it really matter now? She’s safe, that’s what matters, right?”

“Yeah…I suppose that you’re right,” Jane conceded as she brushed a few strands of Jessi’s short black hair away from the girl’s eyes and blushed a little as Jessi lightly grabbed at the side of her leather jacket in her sleep. “ _Sorry about this, Jessi,_ ” she thought to herself as she gently pried the girl’s fingers from her jacket and got up from the couch–gently laying her on her side before taking her jacket off and placing it over her to keep her warm. With that done, she walked over towards one of the windows and glanced out at the setting sun before turning to face everybody. “Okay, night is just about here, so we…we need to get two things settled as soon as possible. One, we need to discuss those ‘zombies’ and combine everything that each of us has found out about them before we met up at the school so that maybe we can get a better idea of what exactly we’re up against. The other is that we need to search the area around here and make sure that there is no place where they can somehow either get over the privacy wall or any spot where the wall itself is weak.”

“Well, you already know everything that I do so I’ll check the perimeter,” Joshua said as he grabbed the Model 70 rifle that he had placed down on the floor after they had got back earlier and left the house.

“I’ll head out too,” Michael decided as he left to catch up to Joshua, “Hey Josh, wait up!”

“So…let me guess: you and Michael have already told each other everything that you know?” Jane questioned as she stretched a little.

“Yeah, we talked about it while we were hiding at the school, trying to get a moment or two of rest.”

“Thought so…so, do you want to start?”

“Yeah, sure. Well, we know that they’re not actual zombies. We don’t know how it got started or what caused it–”

“Patient Zero.”

“What?”

“It’s an old medical term used to refer to the initial patient in an epidemic–aka the first one to be visibly affected by whatever happened.”

“O…kay. Moving on, we know that they can be killed any way that a normal human being can be.”

“Right. Also, their eyes are also almost entirely worthless. I’d say that they could see maybe about two to two and a half feet in front of them or so. Although…keeping that in mind, their hearing is good–too good. We saw that back at the school. The only other thing that I can think of is about how fast they are. Some of them are just as slow as the zombies were in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, some run like marathon runners, and the rest seem to fall somewhere in between.”

“That’s it though…that’s all any of us know.”

“Well, as long as we can keep on getting rid of them and surviving this hell then maybe we’ll make it to see a brighter tomorrow…if we can get to that point then–then we should be okay,” Jane said, taking her glasses off for a moment to wipe them clean with the edge of her dress shirt. She didn’t care if it scuffed up the lens on her glasses at this point considering how scuffed up the lens already were and besides she had to get the sweat off that had accumulated on them earlier during their journey into the Student Union anyway.

“ _Nathan? Nicole? Are either one of you there?_ ”

“Yeah, this is Nathan. Something up?” she questioned as she grabbed at the walkie-talkie clipped to her belt.

“ _No, everything’s fine on our end. Josh just asked me to check in and make sure that everything was still fine inside the house._ ”

“Well, everything’s fine here, Michael.”

“ _All right, cool. Well, we should be done out here shortly and then we’ll head back in._ ”

“Understood. See you guys th–” Jane began but stopped as she realized that Michael had stopped listening on his end, “I really should have seen that coming.” She glanced over her shoulder at Jessi and felt something inside of her tug a little at the sight of the girl curled up on the couch with her jacket. She turned back to Nicole and held the walkie-talkie out to her. “Hey Nicole, um…would you mind listening just in case Michael or Josh get back on? I’m, uh, I’m going to carry Jessi up to one of the bedrooms and tuck her in since after all…well, a bed’s got to be more comfortable than a couch, right?” she explained before hearing Nicole laughing.

“I’m sorry Nathan, I really am. It’s just that I never figured you for the type to have a ‘big brother instinct’ towards anyone…let alone someone that you haven’t even really known for a couple of hours so far,” she said as Jane began to blush at Nicole’s words.

“Well, uh…I–I don’t really know. I–I just know that it _feels_ right to me. Beyond that, I don’t know why. I mean, I–I’ve never had any brothers or sisters before so it’s not as if I know _what_ a big brother is supposed to do–”

“Nathan, you’re rambling,” she said, cutting Jane off before giving her a smile and taking the offered walkie-talkie, “don’t sweat it and do _not_ overthink it. Now, go on. I’ll handle Josh and Michael if they contact us again.”

“Nicole…thanks,” she said as she headed over towards the couch and gently picked up Jessi in her arms before she began climbing the stairs to the second floor.

“Mmm…mmph…” Jessi muttered in her sleep as she tossed and turned in Jane’s arms.

“Shh, Jessi. You’re safe now. You’re safe here with us,” she whispered softly as she opened the door to one of the bedrooms and walked inside. She laid her on the bed–gently prying her fingers from the jacket and laying it to the side before taking her shoes off–and pulled the covers up to her shoulders so that she hopefully wouldn’t get cold later on. With that done, Jane began to walk away only to stop as–

“Mmph…mmm…Na–Nathan?”

“Hey Jessi,” she said as she walked back over towards the bed, “you can go back to sleep, everything’s okay.”

“But those things…”

“Don’t worry about them right now. Josh and Michael went outside to make sure that they couldn’t get to us. We’re safe from them, trust me.”

“But–”

“Jessi, we _are_ safe from them. Now, you need to get some rest, all right? You’ve had a rough day.”

“…okay, but umm…could you–”

“Stay here with you?” she ventured.

“Umm, yeah.”

“Sure,” she said as she grabbed a nearby chair and placed it next to the bed before she sat down in it.

“Nathan…you’ll still be here when I wake up, right? You and Josh and Nicole and Michael?”

“We’ll still be here, I promise,” she said, giving her a smile as she lightly squeezed her hand, “good night and sweet dreams, Jessi.”

“Good night…”


	5. Chapter 05

~March 12, 2008~

~12:00 noon – 3:20 p.m.~

 

“Mmm…mmph,” Jane muttered in her sleep as she raised her head from its resting place on her arms and glanced around.

“Finally decide to wake up?”

“Wha…oh, hey Josh…yeah, yeah I suppose so,” Jane replied after a moment as she got up from the chair and stretched a little, trying to ignore the multiple aches in her body. She glanced over at the bed for a moment and was a little confused when she didn’t see Jessi until she glanced back at the doorway and saw her standing alongside Joshua, Nicole, and Michael. “Hey Jessi, sleep well?” she asked and smiled a little as she saw her nod, “that’s good.”

“Nathan, just so you know we found out something interesting while you were asleep.”

“Hmm?” she asked as she grabbed her jacket from where she had placed it off to the side the evening before and slipped it back on, “what is it?”. In her sleep-addled state though, she didn’t realize that she’d forgotten to zip the jacket back up.

“We found a laptop lying around earlier and managed to get it hooked up to the campus network and well…let’s just say that you might want to come and see for yourself.”

“O…kay, then,” she said after a moment as she followed everybody down the stairs and sat down at the table that the laptop had been placed on. She glanced at the website that was brought up on the screen and voiced the only thing that came to her mind: “Facebook? It’s the end of the world out there for us and you guys think that the fact that this website is still up is interesting?”

“That’s not what we meant. Log into your stupid account first.”

“Fine,” Jane said, rolling her eyes a little as she logged into her account before being nearly shocked into silence at what she saw, “the hell?”

“Yeah, we know. It seems as though everybody that we know is using Facebook as a way to deal with what’s happening right now. Some are posting pictures of safe areas as well as areas to stay the hell away from, others are using the status updates to post where everyone is currently hiding out at, locations of possible supply caches, and asking for–and sharing–information about missing persons and about what’s going on right now.”

“Well…I guess even Facebook’s not totally useless after all. Just needed the apocalypse to become useful was all,” Jane joked to herself as she began to search through everybody’s status updates, trying to find something useful.

 

**_Aaron– “What the hell is going on around here? It’s like a horror movie out there!”_ **

**_Eric – “It’s a zombie apocalypse, that’s what it is no matter what they’re claiming about it being a terrorist attack. Where’s everybody at?”_ **

**_James – “Several of us are holed up over here in Calhoun City. Unless something else happens any time soon then we should be okay here.”  
_ **

 

**_Dave – “Anyone that’s planning on heading towards Oxford, turn back. John and I just barely managed to get out of there in time before it was overrun and the bombs began to fall.”_ **

**_Andrea – “What? We just passed through there and didn’t see anything but wreckage.”_ **

**_Dave – “Trust me, there were hundreds of them swarming into Oxford just a couple of hours ago. Btw, where are you headed and is anyone else there with you?”_ **

**_Andrea – “It’s just Sam and me along with a couple of guns and knives. Right now, we’re planning on trying to reach the Tennessee border and see if the military’s managed to set up any safe areas yet for survivors.”_ **

 

**_Kaitlyn – “Head shot!”_ **

**_Michelle – “What?”_ **

**_Kaitlyn – “Oh sorry, just sniped a zombie from the house that I’m currently using as a fort. Planning on heading for the coast as soon as things die down around here.”_ **

 

**_Heather – “Everybody, don’t head towards Shady Grove. We just got back from there and the whole place is flooded with zombies. As for the rest of Banner, we don’t know for sure yet.”_ **

**_Michelle – “Thanks for the heads up, but we’re going to try for Tupelo if we have to leave here any time soon.”_ **

 

“Well…at least we’re not the only ones still surviving, that’s a good thing,” Jane said mostly to herself with a sigh of relief that Kaitlyn was still alive as she got out of the chair to let Michael check through his friends’ status updates for any news.

“We still don’t _know_ any more about them though,” Nicole said as she glanced out a nearby window to make sure that the five of them were still all alone.

“Well, what now? Are we going to stay here or go out there and try to gather everybody that we can together since we can find out where everybody’s at now?” Michael asked as he turned on the television and began to click through the channels.

“I don’t know. We’re safest right here for now, but…there’s strength in numbers and…but, da–” she suddenly stopped as she heard a gunshot go off followed by a nearby window shattering from the bullet’s impact. “The hell?” she muttered as she heard a second shot followed by the distinctive sound of glass shattering from somewhere nearby again. “Get down,” she told everybody as she made her way to the nearest intact window and tried to get a look at who or what was shooting at them. “You have _got_ to be kidding me,” she said as she turned back towards everybody, “there’s two guys headed this way and they’re both waving revolvers…and I don’t think that they’re looking to team up with us.”

“Hey, whoever is in there, let us in. We’ve had a rough trip and just need somewhere to stay for a while.”

“ _Yeah, right,_ ” Jane sarcastically thought to herself as she came up with an idea. “Give us a second and we’ll be out there!” she yelled before turning back to face everybody. “Josh, get up on the second floor and take your Model seventy with you. I trust you to know what to do beyond that. Michael, please take Jessi with you to the second floor too and keep her safe; don’t come back down until Josh gives you an all-clear. Nicole, you’re with me,” she whispered as she grabbed the Ruger Mini-14 rifle–“sorry about it only having iron sights and not a scope”–from their stash and tossed it to her before grabbing the Auto-5 shotgun for herself.

“So, what’s the plan? Open the door and blow their brains out?” Nicole asked, realizing perhaps for the first time that if they wanted to survive, then maybe they would _have_ to kill more than just zombies.

“Maybe not, although I’ve got a bad feeling that it’ll probably come to it before it’s over. Right now though, the plan is to talk and see if we can’t strike some kind of bargain with them.”

“And what if they try to shoot us as soon as we open the door?”

“Well, that’s where Josh comes in. If they’re waiting for us to open the door so that they can kill us and take our supplies, then Josh will kill both of them. Otherwise, he’ll wait to see how everything works out.”

“Solid plan…what could go wrong?” Nicole asked with a hint of sarcasm as she readied herself on the other side of the door.

“I know you’re being sarcastic, Nicole, but please don’t tempt fate right now,” she muttered, readying herself as she slowly opened the door only to hear a gunshot and a scream as the first of the two men went down–brain matter leaking out onto the ground from the gaping hole in his head.

“Nathan!”

“Wha–” she began but stopped as she saw the second man raise his revolver only to drop it as several rounds of .223 Remington turned his right kneecap into ground beef and forced him down on the ground. “Thanks, Nicole.”

“Don’t mention it, Nathan.”

“Now, as for you,” she began as she watched the man reach out to try to pick his revolver back up from where he had dropped it. “No, you don’t,” she said as she slammed her steel-toed boot down onto the man’s hand as Nicole grabbed the revolver along with the dead man’s gun. “Now, you listen to me you bastard. You shot at us through those windows earlier. You could have easily killed any of us. Then, you tried to kill us as we opened the door!”

“We…we just wanted a place to stay at so that we’d be safe–”

“Don’t try that crap with me!” Jane all but screamed as she grabbed the man by his shirt and yanked him to his feet–every last shred of rage and despair that she had felt since their world ended taking control of her as she locked eyes with the bastard.

“Nathan, let’s just toss him back over the wall and leave him there. He won’t be able to make it back here with the condition he’s in,” Nicole said, glancing around to make sure that there were still zero zombies in sight.

“You shot at us and tried to kill us, you bastard!” she growled–ignoring Nicole–as she dropped the man to the ground and just stared at him for a moment.

“Go to hell! You fucking kids wouldn’t have lasted another day anyway!”

“Just shut up!” she screamed as she brought her shotgun in line with the guy’s face and watched for a moment as the blood drained from the man’s face. She paused for a moment longer and pulled the trigger out of instinct just as the man tried to dodge. She couldn’t do anything but stare silently as the close-range shot tore its way through most of the guy’s head–leaving behind nothing more than just chunks of bone and bloody strips of flesh.

“We’re really going to have to do this again, aren’t we?”

“I’m not going to lie to you Nicole, but yeah, I’m almost certain of it,” she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking as they stepped back inside, locking the door behind them. “Nicole, you–” she began but stopped as she saw Nicole drop her rifle along with the two dead men’s revolvers and race off–the bathroom door slamming closed a moment later. “After what just happened, I’d actually be more worried if she wasn’t sick to her stomach after seeing something like _that_ happen,” she mumbled to herself as she suddenly began to gag and rushed over to the nearest window–dropping her shotgun and barely managing to open the window just in time as she began to vomit…much like what she suspected was going on with Nicole.

“Nathan, you okay?”

“Oh…dear god,” she muttered–still able to taste bile in the back of her mouth–as she collapsed on the floor and tried to wipe off the vomit from around her lips with her sleeve even as she gave her friend a shaky nod of her head. “I’m–I’m okay.”

“…whatever you say. So, how’s Nicole?”

“Take a guess. She’s in there,” she said, pointing towards the bathroom with a shaky hand.

“Damn…although, considering the circumstances I don’t blame her.”

“…where are Michael and Jessi?”

“They should be on their way down here.”

“All–all right. Hey Josh…don’t let Jessi know what we did.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t.”

“Thanks buddy…” she muttered as she felt herself gag again but managed to keep from vomiting a second time. “I’m going to head outside for a moment…there’s something that I want to check out,” she said as she shakily got to her feet.

“Want some help?” Joshua asked as he watched his friend stumble a little.

“No, I’ll be okay,” she said as she bent down and retrieved her Redhawk revolver from where she had left it yesterday before shrugging her vest on and adjusting it. With that done, she grabbed her AR-10 rifle, one of their walkie-talkies, and a pair of half-fingered light assault gloves. After she managed to sling the rifle over her shoulder, she left the sanctity of the house and headed around to the back. “ _I remember Dave saying something about the staff keeping a vehicle somewhere around here in a shed or something in case of an emergency,_ ” she thought to herself as she found herself standing in front of a small shed at the rear of the house. She opened the unlocked double doors and felt herself smile just a little–“ _this’ll do nicely_ ”–as she caught sight of the four-wheeler–no, ATV–that was parked inside. She unscrewed the gas cap and sighed with relief as she estimated that the tank was nearly full before glancing around for the keys only to see that they were already in the ignition.

She grabbed the keys from the ignition before she turned around to leave and head back to the house–only to stop as she remembered something. “Crap–crap–crap!” she said over and over as she realized that the frag grenade from the day before was still in a pouch on her vest. She gently removed the pouch and grenade from her vest and opened the driver’s side door of her car–placing the grenade inside the console between the front two seats. “Okay, that’ll keep it from rolling around and will get it off of my hands,” she mumbled as she closed the door and began to make her way towards the front steps of the house. She was fine with a melee weapon in her hand. She was fine with a gun in her hand. A grenade was something else entirely. “Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look,” she told herself repeatedly as she passed the two corpses on the steps as she walked inside the front door–making sure to lock it behind her.

“That was quick.”

“Umm yeah…I kind of forgot for a moment while I was out there that we’re in the middle of a zombie outbreak.”

“That’s so like you.”

“Hey, are you guys okay?” Michael asked as he and Jessi made their way down the stairs.

“Yeah, we’re all right. Everything’s fine,” Nicole replied as she made her way towards the rest of the group–presumably having spent up until that moment in the bathroom trying to get over what they had just done earlier.

“So, is the plan still the same?”

“What?” Jane and Nicole both asked as they turned towards Joshua.

“The plan to hold up here for the time being. Are we still going to stick to it or not?”

“Well, I don’t see why not. Even after what’s happened…it’s still safer _here_ than out _there_ ,” Jane said as she grabbed the two revolvers that Nicole had dropped on the floor earlier and glanced at them for a moment before putting one in her pants pocket and holding the other out to Michael. “Smith & Wesson Model twenty-seven…five inch barrel…three fifty-seven Magnum…six shot capacity. Take it Michael, it’s yours,” she offered.

“Wow, uh, thanks Nathan,” he said as he grabbed the revolver by its grip and inspected it only to realize that there were only four rounds remaining in it. “Did we grab any three fifty seven Magnum rounds at that gun store yesterday?”

“Yeah, I remember grabbing a box or two of it yesterday along with a cartridge belt designed for those rounds.”

“Great, thanks Josh,” Michael replied, grinning a little as he left to go rummage around in the stash that they had grabbed from that gun store.

“ _As for this other revolver…a Colt Cobra thirty-eight Special with six round capacity…I think that I’d better hang onto it for the time being…at least until I’m sure that I can give it to Jessi without having to worry about her accidentally shooting any of us,_ ” Jane thought to herself as she patted the revolver in her pocket before stretching a little. “By the way you guys, we’ve still got several hours of sunlight left so what should we do?” she asked, glancing down at her wristwatch only to notice that it was about one in the afternoon.

“Well, two of us should scout around outside again to make sure that no zombies are nearby like Joshua and Michael did yesterday,” Nicole suggested.

“Great idea Nicole,” Michael agreed as he decided to make his own suggestion, “how about Nicole and I handle it today? Then, starting tomorrow we’ll figure out some kind of schedule for who goes out to check the area each day until we decide to leave.”

“Sounds great. You okay with going out today, Nicole?”

“Sure,” Nicole replied and smiled a little, “besides, I need some fresh air anyway.”

“Great. I’m going to see if there have been any updates on what’s happening on the Internet and on television,” Joshua said, walking off one way as Nicole and Michael walked off in the opposite direction–grabbing their vests, a Ruger Mini-14 rifle, and a baseball bat along the way before leaving the house.

“Guess that it’s just you and me, Jessi,” Jane said with a slight laugh as she sat down next to their weapon stash and motioned for Jessi to join her.

“Yeah, I guess it really is just the two of us,” she agreed as she sat down next to Jane and watched as she began to load rounds into the firearms in the stash that were currently empty.

“Hey Jessi?”

“Hmm?” she asked, blinking a few times as she realized that her eyes had been following all of Jane’s movements as she loaded each firearm.

“I was just thinking…whatever happened to your parents and what about your brother? You told us yesterday that you were holed up in the Student Union with your brother, but we only found you.”

“Well, umm, my parents are out of town. They left a few days ago to go down to the Gulf Coast for vacation. My brother though…my brother, well, uh–”

“Those zombies took him from you, didn’t they? He protected you for as long as he could though, didn’t he?” she asked and instantly regretted it as she saw her begin to cry–even as she tried to hold it in.

“It’s–it’s just not fair! Everything that he did–he…he did everything to protect me and–and–” she struggled to say as Jane leaned over and wrapped her arms around her.

“Shh Jessi, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up,” she whispered as she rested her chin on the top of her head as Jessi continued to cry into her chest. “ _Jane, you stupid idiot! How could you think to bring that up right now? Look at what you did to her!_ ” she mentally screamed at herself; hardly able to believe that she had been so stupid.

“Why? Why did all this happen?”

“I don’t know. I…I just don’t know,” she whispered as she continued to hold on to the tiny girl, “all that I know is that life is unfair, but it’s still worth living. When we give up on that, it’s all over. You lost your brother, but you’re not the only one that’s either lost family members or have missing family. I lost the _only_ family that I had when all of this happened. Both of my parents gone in an instant; taken from me before I could even say goodbye. The same goes for Josh. Some of his family is missing while the others died in a car crash a few months before all of this started…and, as far as I know, both Nicole and Michael’s families are missing with no trace of them anywhere…”

“Na–Nathan, I–” she began but paused as she saw Jane bring her face in line with hers–trying to smile for her.

“Jessi, I–I just want you to know that uh…that we’ll always be here for you and uh…crap, I wish that I could say this right…I guess that what I’m trying to say is that we’ll be your family…if, umm, that’s okay with you?”

“Do you really mean that?”

“I do,” she replied just as Jessi hugged her neck and actually started smiling–a silent gesture that conveyed her answer to Jane’s question. “Also…um, while I’m thinking about it…here,” she said, taking her black straw fedora off and placing it on her head.

“Umm…” she began, blushing just a little as she straightened the hat on her head before glancing up at Jane, only to see her grinning.

“It looks great on you, Jessi.”

“Why though? Why are you giving me your hat, Nathan?”

“No particular reason. I guess that if you want to though, you could consider it a present or a gift or something like that,” she explained, blushing a little and giving off an awkward laugh.

“Oh…well, thanks Nathan!”

“Umm, Nathan? Jessi? We’ve got a little problem.”

“Hmm? What’s wrong?” she asked as she glanced over at the front door to see Nicole and Michael leaning against it–both of their faces pale white and covered with sweat, “what the hell happened to you two?”

“At the–at the gate–”

“What Michael’s trying to say is that they found us! There’s a whole mob of zombies at the gate and along sections of the privacy wall trying to climb over it!” Nicole explained hurriedly as she made her way over to the nearest window to see if any had managed to get over the wall or the gate.

“Damn…they must have heard the shots from earlier,” Jane reasoned as she glanced down to see the look of worry in Jessi’s eyes. “Don’t worry, we’ll be all right. We’ll just pack up and get out of here before they can get here to the house,” she whispered to her as she got to her feet, “I promise.”

“So, how are we going to handle this?” Joshua asked, suddenly appearing from a nearby room and walking towards them.

“Well, we can’t stay here that’s for sure,” Jane replied as she began to toss the majority of their guns into a couple of bags and gun cases that they had grabbed from the store the other day. “We’ve got to get out of here,” she began as she stopped for a moment to join Nicole at the window. “And by the looks of things, we’re going to need to get out of here within the next few minutes,” she finished as she saw a few zombies managing to almost get over the gate before falling back down to the ground.

“Nathan, those zombies nearly got over the gate. If they keep at it, they’re going to get over it along with the walls really _really_ soon,” Nicole said as she turned away from the window.

“We really need a plan here, guys. What are we going to do?” Michael asked.

“I–” began both Jane and Nicole before stopping and shaking their heads.

“You go first,” Jane offered as she began to gather her equipment together.

“All right. Michael, can you help me grab as much of the food and supplies as we can that we brought here and load them into your SUV?”

“No problem,” he agreed as he began to pack the food and supplies up as quickly as possible.

“Then, Josh and I’ll handle the guns and the rest of the equipment. We’ll get the rest of it packed up and toss it into my car. After that, Michael and Nicole can head out first. His SUV should be able to knock the gate off of its hinges without getting completely torn up since I seriously doubt that we’re going to get a chance to safely unlock it and should also be able to handle any zombies that wind up getting in our way better than my car ever could.”

“And once we’re out of here, it’d probably be best if we got out of Oxford as fast as we can. We can’t risk trying to set up another safe house just a couple of miles away just to have all of these zombies and probably more follow us. We need to try to get far enough away from them so that we lose them,” Nicole replied.

“Tupelo?” Jane suggested as she placed another pack completely filled with guns off to the side.

“Perfect!” Nicole replied–grabbing her Ruger Mini-14 by the strap and slinging it over her shoulder as well as checking to make sure that her Smith & Wesson Model 327 was fully loaded–as she began to help Michael carry the food and supplies out to his SUV.

“Josh, can you carry those bags out to my car while I finish packing up the rest of the guns?”

“Sure, but you know…if this wasn’t the frickin’ apocalypse, then I’d tell you to carry them your own damn self.”

“I know, I know. Here, take this,” Jane replied as she tossed her friend the Winchester Model 70 sporting rifle. With that done, she turned towards Jessi and put her hands on her shoulders for a moment. “Jessi, I need you to do something for us. I need you to keep watch and let us know if any zombies manage to get over the wall or gate. Can you do that?”

“Got it,” she said, nodding as she began to move from window to window–looking out through each one to make sure that they were still safe from any direction.

“Good girl,” Jane whispered to herself as she quickly packed the rest of the guns–only leaving out two guns from the stash: the Browning Auto-5 shotgun and Remington Model 1100 semi-automatic shotgun. She slung both shotguns over her left shoulder onto her back before picking up the last of the bags with her left hand–leaving her right hand free to carry her AR-10 rifle. “Damn it, I didn’t think this stuff could be this heavy,” she muttered as she made her way out to her car and put the bag in the trunk before slamming the top of the trunk back down and letting it lock itself. She glanced around for a moment and saw Michael climbing into his SUV. “Michael, take this,” she said as she slid the Model 1100 shotgun through the driver’s side window and into Michael’s lap, “you two might need it.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention–”

“Nathan! The gate!”

“Shit…” she muttered as she quickly unfolded the bipod and let the rifle come to a rest on the hood of the SUV as she lined the red dot sight up with her eye. “I’ve got them! Thanks Jessi!” she called out as she put down the ones that had managed to get over the gate and took down a few more for good measure before folding the bipod back up. “As soon as you two hear my car start up, head straight for the gate and then start making your way towards Tupelo. We’ll be right behind you.”

“Got it Nathan,” Michael replied while Nicole was checking over the Model 1100 shotgun.

“Hey Nathan, make sure that you take care of–”

“Jessi? I know and I promise that they won’t get to her. I’ll make sure of that myself. Now, get ready to get going,” she replied to Nicole before racing off back inside the house. “Josh!? Jessi!?” she called out.

“We’re right over here,” Joshua answered as he stopped shooting at zombies from one of the windows and turned towards Jane–Jessi at Joshua’s side carrying the laptop and the charger for it.

“Okay, great. You’re both still all right. Quick update on the plan: Nicole and Michael are outside and waiting to hear my car crank up before they head out. So, I need you two to get out there and burn rubber,” she said, tossing her keys once again to Joshua, “I’ll be right behind you guys…just don’t wait up for me though.”

“So, how are you going to get out?”

“There’s an ATV in the shed out back. I’m going to grab it and get away from here on it.”

“Nathan, but–”

“Don’t worry,” she told Jessi, pulling the brim of _her_ fedora up a little so that she could see eye to eye with her before smiling, “I’m not planning on abandoning you. Just go with Josh for now and I’ll catch up to you guys.”

“I–”

“Nathan, take care. A little warning though: they’re beginning to make their way here through the backyard,” Joshua said fairly deadpan as he pointed towards a window at the rear of the house and the ten to fifteen zombies that had already managed to clear the backyard portion of the privacy wall.

“Damn…think that you could give me about five seconds of cover fire through that window?”

“Sure, no problem,” he replied as he made his way to the window and shattered it with the butt of his rifle before he motioned for Jane to get going.

“Thanks, see you guys soon,” Jane said–quickly grabbing her crowbar and placing it on her belt–as she raced back outside and began to make her way around the house. “Ah shit,” she muttered as she saw that a couple of the zombies had already managed to reach the shed despite Joshua’s shots. She brought her AR-10 up and managed to down each one relatively quick as she raced inside before any of the others could react to her presence hopefully. She was wrong though and only realized it when she felt something tackle her from behind. She hit the ground face-first, but managed to roll herself over onto her back just as she saw a zombie pounce on her. She managed to bring her rifle up in time and catch the zombie’s teeth on the stock of the rifle. She needed to knock it away so that she could get a shot. She tried pushing back using a combination of her rifle and her foot and barely managed to knock the zombie away just as she heard what sounded like something being ripped.

As the zombie tried to recover and pounce on her again though, she managed to get her rifle up and fired a round that hit the zombie directly in its face and blew out the back part of its head. Even with her heart still racing and her body shaky, Jane hurriedly made her way over to the ATV. She quickly got the keys for the ATV out of her pocket and started it up, nearly whooping in relief as she heard it start up without any issues. She slung her rifle over her right shoulder and let it come to a rest against her back before deciding to see exactly what this ATV could do. She let it rev for a moment before speeding out of the shed just as two zombies dived inside–just barely managing to avoid both. She saw another one try to reach for her, but she managed to swerve to the side just enough that it only managed to grab a handful of nothing but air. She managed to work her way back around to the front of the house and smiled a little as she noticed both vehicles already gone. “All right, so they made it out okay. Now, I’ve just got to catch up to them,” she mumbled to herself as she sped over the warped and twisted gate that was now lying on the ground and made her way off of the property and pushed the speedometer on the ATV up to about sixty as she raced across what was once the campus of Ole Miss. “ _I just hope that Tupelo is in better condition that Oxford was…and if we’re lucky…maybe it’ll also be zombie free._ ”


	6. Chapter 06

~March 12 - 13, 2008~

~3:40 p.m. – 4:28 a.m.~

 

Jane had probably been driving for about twenty minutes when she heard her cellphone start vibrating. She guessed about where the answer key and speakerphone key were and then pressed down on her cargo pants about where she thought the keys should have been.

“ _Where the hell are you?_ ”

“Where am I? Where are you guys?”

“ _We’re headed to Tupelo, where else would we be?_ ”

“Well, sorry about taking so long but I’ve been kinda busy!” she replied as she took her right hand off the handle for a moment to splatter another zombie’s brains across the pavement. “Let’s just say that when you guys left, every zombie within a damn couple of miles started following you and I’ve been stuck trying to get through all of them without getting bit or dragged off of my ride so I don’t want to hear any frickin’ sarcasm right now!”

“ _Sheesh…all right. We’re stopped at a gas station just off the road–_ ”

“Yeah, I can see it. Give me a few minutes and I’ll be there. Just got to take care of a few more stragglers,” she replied as she ended the call and slowed the ATV down–placing the now-empty revolver back in its holster as she brought her AR-10 to bear against the remaining eight zombies between her and the gas station. She managed to down each one with a single shot to the chest before turning around and putting down the last two zombies following her that she hadn’t managed to shake before then. With that done, she paused for just a moment to make sure that none of them got back up before she cleared the rest of the distance to the gas station and stopped the ATV next to one of the pumps. She unscrewed the cap on the gas tank and began to fill it up as she took a look at both her car and Michael’s SUV only to realize that both were empty. “Probably inside,” she reasoned as she made her way inside the station to find the rest of the group grabbing some snacks and drinks. “So, did you guys miss me?” she called out, trying to lighten up the situation.

“Nathan, you’re still okay!” Jessi said, smiling as she rushed over to Jane and hugged her legs.

“Well, I did promise that everything would be okay,” she said as she wiped a smidge of chocolate from the corner of Jessi’s mouth and wiped it off on her cargo pants.

“Nathan, what happened back at Rowan Oak? Why did you stay behind?” Nicole asked, taking a bite out of something that she had grabbed from the snack aisle.

“Well, I kind of figured that we could definitely use anything that we could get our hands on and well–” she paused as she gestured towards the ATV outside, “I thought that an ATV could come in handy considering the circumstances. Sorry about worrying you guys though.”

“Seriously Nathan, you really had us worried,” Michael said as he took a gulp from a bottle of water.

“I know, I know,” Jane replied before she saw Michael suddenly stare wide-eyed at _her_ before choking on the bottle of water that he was drinking from, “hey, you okay, Michael?”

“Wha–what–the…the he–hell, man?” Michael struggled to say between coughs, “what…the… _fuck_ are _those_?”

Jane stared at Michael for a moment before she glanced around only to find Jessi, Nicole, and even Joshua staring at her. “Why are you guys staring at…” she trailed off as she glanced downward and realized that her shirts were ripped, exposing her binder and the squished breast tissue underneath to everybody in the room, “… _me_.” She quickly fumbled with the zipper on her jacket and zipped it all the way up before her body went on auto-pilot as she raced towards the first door that she saw: the women’s bathroom. She slammed the door behind her and braced her back against it as she tried to calm her breathing. Why did she react that way? Why didn’t she just calmly zip her jacket up and explain the situation? Why did she react like that when there were more important things like focusing on surviving a zombie outbreak?

“Nathan?”

Jane felt her breath hitch in her throat as she heard Nicole calling her name. “What?” she tried to calmly ask only to wince as her voice came out high-pitched.

“Are you…okay?”

“I’m…I’m fine.”

“Can I come in then?”

Jane wanted to say ‘no’. Hell, she wanted to scream it. Instead though, she took a deep breath and worked on steadying her voice before taking a single step away from the door. “…sure.”

A moment later, the door slowly opened and Nicole slowly inched her way inside the bathroom before closing the door behind her. She glanced at Jane’s face for a moment before she switched to staring at the tiles that made up the floor. “I… _we’re_ all sorry about earlier, Nathan. We shouldn’t have reacted like we did.”

“It’s okay… _really_.”

Nicole nodded. “So, are you…”

She didn’t need to finish her sentence. Jane knew exactly what she meant. What she didn’t know though was how to answer it. She didn’t know if she should give a half-lie or just tell her the full truth. In the end, she decided on the full truth and hoped that maybe Nicole and everyone wouldn’t leave her behind out of disgust. “Yes, I’m a girl, Nicole. I’m a girl and I always have been…but, my body…my body is sort of…” she paused for a moment as she felt her hands shaking, “look, according to a couple of doctors, I’ve got a hormonal imbalance or something like that. I think they called it Klinefelters or something like that. I know that it started with ‘Kline’. Anyway, it means that in my case I’m genetically male but with certain… _differences_. The two aren’t related though. I mean, even if I didn’t have that syndrome thing and looked like Josh or Michael, it still wouldn’t change the fact that I still feel female. I don’t _feel_ male and believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve really tried, but I don’t feel like _me_ when I think of myself as Nathan.” She cut herself off there as she realized that she was beginning to ramble and nervously fiddled with her jacket’s zipper as she waited for Nicole’s judgment.

“Oh…so you’re trans _and_ have Klinefelters? Well, that explains why you’ve been so uncomfortable the past couple of years,” she replied before smiling just a little, “so, have you picked a name for the real you?”

“Yeah,” she replied as she turned her back on Nicole and glanced at her reflection in the mirror before she realized what Nicole had said, “wait, what did you say?”

“I asked if you’ve picked out a name yet.”

“I, uh, yeah. It’s uh, it’s Jane,” she replied nervously.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Jane.”

“Um, same here, Nicole. But, two things. One, how did you even know about the word ‘trans’. And two, why are you so calm and smiling?”

“Let’s see…one, my cousin is a LGBT supporter and for better or worse he cannot shut up sometimes so I know a few things about the groups that fall under it. Two, I’m partially calm because I’m still running on adrenaline here _and_ I’m smiling because I’m happy for you. Any other questions?”

Jane smiled a little. “No, and thanks.”

“No problem. Now, I hate to say this, but we probably need to get going before any zombies make their way here.”

“Right,” she replied and glanced down at her hands only to see that they were shaking once again, this time at the very thought of having to go back out there and see everybody else again.

“Will it help if I tell them about everything and ask them to not mention it again for the time being?” she asked as she noticed how badly Jane’s hands were shaking.

Instead of saying anything, she simply nodded. To be honest though, she didn’t know if she _could_ even say anything right then.

“All right then, I’ll come back and let you know when I’m done. Oh, and one other thing, do you want me to ask them to call you Jane?” she asked and waited for Jane to nod before she left the bathroom and headed back to where everybody else was still at.

After a few minutes, Jane heard the bathroom door open once again and glanced over to see Nicole standing there.

“I explained things to them. Jessi didn’t seem to understand, but said that you were _you_ no matter what. Josh understood and said that he was still your partner…whatever that’s supposed to mean. As for Michael, he seemed to understand even though he did make a few comments. Don’t worry, I smacked him up the side of his head for those. But just so you know, his comments weren’t mean-spirited, they were more along the lines of sticking his foot in his mouth.”

“Um…”

“In other words, Michael made some insensitive comments without thinking first about what he was saying,” Nicole explained before the two of them slowly made their way towards the door and then back to where everybody else was.

“Um…hey you guys,” Jane mumbled as she glanced up at Jessi, Joshua, and Michael.

“You good to go, Jane?” Joshua asked as he pointed towards the window, “we’ve only got a few more hours of daylight and we’re still forty minutes away from Tupelo.”

Jane nodded her head and was thankful that Joshua in particular was acting as though what had happened earlier had actually never even happened minus the name switch of course– which admittedly Jane couldn’t help but smile a little at. “Yeah, I’m good,” she said as she took a few more steps towards them and was glad that none of them seemed to flinch and look at her like she was a freak. “Are you guys ready?”

“Just waiting on you,” Michael said.

“Well, all right, let’s get going then. No time to waste after all,” she said before she noticed Jessi glancing up at her, “something on your mind, Jessi?”

“I was just wondering…if it’s all right…I’d like to ride along with you.”

“Are you sure, Jessi?” Jane asked, “riding on an ATV’s a lot different from riding in a car.”

“Yep.”

“Well, okay then.”

“All right, let’s get going you guys,” Nicole said as she walked past Jane and opened the front doors of the gas station.

###

“Hey Jessi, just so you know…when somebody says to hold on tight…they don’t mean to hold tight enough to nearly crack a rib,” Jane said as the entire group pulled into the parking lot of the Hilton Garden Inn. She took a quick glance over at the BancorpSouth Conference Center that was adjacent to the inn. So far, it definitely seemed as if luck was on their side: not a single zombie, only a few craters near the outskirts of the city, and a couple of abandoned police cars that they could go back and scavenge supplies from later on.

“Uh, umm, sorry Jane,” she said quickly as she let go of her and got off the ATV.

“Nah, it’s nothing to be sorry about, Jessi,” she said, smiling a little as she killed the engine and placed the keys in her pocket, “I’m just saying that you’ve got a strong grip for such a little girl.”

“I’m not that little,” she replied, smiling a little regardless at the slight teasing as she watched Jane adjust the shotgun and rifle on her back before the two of them met up with the rest of the group at the front entrance to the inn.

“So, how long do you think that we’ll be safe here?” Michael asked.

“More to the point: what’s the plan for possibly clearing this place out?”

“Groups?” Jane suggested as she glanced over towards Nicole in particular.

“Sounds great. So, who’s going with whom?” Nicole replied.

“Josh and I’ll cover the lower floors,” Michael volunteered.

“Guess that leaves you and me, Nicole, for team two.”

“What about–”

“I know. I haven’t forgotten,” Jane said as she turned towards Jessi, “so, who do you want to go with?”

“Um…Michael and Josh? I…I’d kind of like to spend some time with them.”

“All right. Well, you heard her, you two. Take good care of her,” Jane announced as she walked over to her car and popped the trunk open before unzipping one of the bags and gesturing for everybody to come over. “I want to make sure that all of us are fully stocked up before we head inside there just in case. After all, the last thing that any of us need is to run out of rounds while we’re fighting, right?” she questioned. “Okay, we’ve got three usable speed loaders on hand–all three designed for three fifty-seven Magnum,” she said before loading two with .38 Special rounds and the third with .357 Magnum–handing one of the .38 Special loaded ones to Nicole, handing the .357 Magnum loaded one to Michael, and keeping the other .38 Special loaded one for herself. “An eight-round cartridge belt…sleeve…cheek pad…whatever for three oh eight Winchester,” she said before inserting eight rounds onto the belt and giving it to Joshua so that he could slip it over the stock on his Winchester Model 70. “Twenty-round magazine of two twenty-three Remington,” she announced, handing it over to Nicole. “One five shell capacity shotgun bandoleer in twelve gauge,” she announced, tossing it over to Michael. “All right, well damn…we’ve only got twenty shells in this bag,” she said before handing ten over to Michael and pocketing the other ten herself. “And to finish it off: two handguns,” she said, as she handed the two over to Michael and Nicole along with a pair of magazines, “a Browning Hi-Power for Michael and a Glock Seventeen that Nicole already called dibs on.” “All right, I guess that we’re set. Just remember: try to go for quiet kills if you can manage it. The more that we can take out before we’re forced to start shooting, the better,” she announced as she grabbed a single twenty-round 7.62 NATO magazine–placing it in her back pocket–as well as six rounds of .45 Colt before closing her car’s trunk.

“Then, we’ll see you two later. Good luck,” Michael said as he, Joshua, and Jessi headed inside the inn.

“Seriously though Jane, a hotel?”

“Well, I didn’t hear any complaints from you,” she replied to Nicole–all the while loading the six .45 Colt rounds into her revolver–as they made their way inside and began to take the stairs to the upper levels.

“True, but I’m just curious as to why. You’ve never been one to agree with one of Michael’s ideas before.”

“Well, the only place that I could think of for us to hide out at was the mall at Barnes Crossing, but then I thought about it and realized how hiding inside a shopping mall tends to work out in zombie films.”

“Not good at all?”

“Right. Dawn of the Dead, Night of the Comet, Bio Zombie–and that’s just off the top of my head,” she whispered before pointing towards the end of the hallway, “could you cover me, Nicole?”

“Sure,” she replied as Jane slung her rifle over her shoulder and took out her crowbar as she made her way towards the lone zombie at the end of the hallway.

“ _Softly now…remember how the ones back at the Student Union wandered around…not too fast now,_ ” she told herself as she gripped the crowbar in both hands as she stopped about a foot or two away–close enough to literally touch the thing. “ _And now!_ ” she told herself as she brought the crowbar down in an overhead swing and nearly smiled as she heard its skull crack open before it collapsed to the ground. She stood there a moment longer before switching her grip to the curved end of the tool and forcing the straight end straight down through the zombie’s brain just in case her first strike hadn’t killed it.

“Overkill,” Nicole whispered along with a strained chuckle as she made her way towards Jane.

“Nah, that’s just what’s called a double tap,” she replied, smiling just a little in response to Nicole’s chuckle as she placed the crowbar back on her belt. “ _Although, I swear that I need to get a better weapon for melee soon…a crowbar is not good for swinging around constantly…that does remind me though. I need to grab one of those knives that we got from the store. If nothing else, it would be great as a last resort._ ”

“Double tap? Let me guess: it’s one of those rules that you and Josh always swore would be the key to surviving a zombie apocalypse?”

“Yeah, it’s one of those. Rule number two: always double tap. There’s also rule number eight: get a kick-ass partner as well as rule number twenty-five: shoot first–” she began, pausing as she opened the only closed door in sight, “oh shit! Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!”

“Oh…oh!” Nicole said in response as she quickly brought her rifle up and took aim at the eight to ten zombies that had been in the room.

Within a matter of seconds, no zombie remained standing as the two of them backed against the wall to calm their nerves.

“Next time there’s a closed door…you get it,” Jane whispered as she ejected the empty magazine from her AR-10 and inserted a full twenty round magazine in its place–placing the empty one inside her back pocket so that she could reuse it later.

“Fine,” she replied as she checked to see how many rounds that she still had in her rifle.

“Hey, do you hear that?” Jane asked, taking a few steps inside the room.

“Yeah, it sounds like somebody left a shower running,” she confirmed, following behind him.

“Okay. Give me a second and I’ll turn it off,” Jane said, slinging her rifle over her shoulder and drawing her Redhawk–making sure to cock the hammer back so that she wouldn’t have to worry about the heavier trigger pull throwing her accuracy off any at such a close range. She made her way to the bathroom and took a deep breath as she noticed that the door was completely open. She took a few steps inside before stopping at the sight in front of her. It was a young woman–probably not that much older than any of them–sitting against one of the walls of the shower with her head tucked down against her knees and her arms wrapped around her legs.

“Nathan,” Nicole whispered almost silently as she saw the naked girl in the shower.

She ignored the name slip-up as she continued to watch the woman in the shower. “I–I know. Could you cover me, please? I’m going to check to see whether or not she’s alive…or dead…or undead…or–” she cut herself off right there as she reached towards the knob and turned the water off to see if the woman would react–she didn’t. She moved her trigger finger down from the cold metal above the trigger and onto the trigger itself as she placed her free hand on the woman’s shoulder before gently shaking her–still nothing. “Don’t tell me…” she whispered to herself as she pried the woman’s hands apart only to see several deep gashes on her wrists. “Nicole…she’s dead,” she said–uncocking her revolver using the thumb on the hammer trick that her dad had shown her and holstering it–as she did what she could to try to lay the corpse out on the floor instead of huddled up in the shower.

“Wait, so…” Nicole began but stopped for a moment as she caught sight of the gashes, “…so she decided to kill herself when she saw all of this beginning to happen?”

“Yeah, sure looks that way,” she replied as she left the bathroom for a moment before returning carrying a bed sheet in her arms. She gently spread the sheet over the corpse and made sure that the woman was fully covered before she stood back up again. “Well, we’ve still got a lot more rooms to cover…” she began, turning towards Nicole and trying to smile–only for the smile to come out looking _much_ more broken than she planned, “guess that we’d better get started, right?”

###

“Hey, how’d everything go on the upper floors?”

“It went fine Michael. What about you guys?” Nicole replied quickly as the two of them entered the lobby–Jane heading straight for the check-in counter.

“Just a few stragglers, nothing that a few skull fractures and bullets couldn’t take care of.”

“So, how long are we planning on staying here?”

“As long as possible, Jessi,” Nicole replied as she adjusted the weight of her rifle on her shoulder.

“So, what are we going to do about rooms?”

“How does two frickin’ suites sound?” Jane asked, holding two key cards in one hand and three in her other hand.

“Nice.”

“Awesome!”

“But…who’s staying with whom?” Nicole asked.

“Well, since they’re suites then I figure that they’ll have two beds each, right? So…two to one room and three to the other, how does that sound?”

“Sounds fine with me.”

“No complaints from me.”

“All right then. Well, Josh and Michael can stay in one suite and three of us will take the other–that okay with everybody?” Jane asked and saw a few particular ‘looks’ thrown her way but no actual voiced complaints. “Great. Here are the cards then,” she said as she passed the cards out to everybody.

“Before we head up to the rooms though, we need to get a few things done first while we still have daylight,” Nicole mentioned as she tucked the card into her pocket, “first, we need to get at least some of the equipment from the vehicles and bring it inside. After that, we need to lock all the entrances down here on the ground floor and see about possibly barricading some of them as well as the windows.”

“Besides all of that, we need to figure out how we’re going to keep watch…wait, maybe we could…hey guys, remind me to check out the hotel’s security system later, all right?”

###

“Two beds, huh?”

“Uh…okay, so I was wrong,” Jane admitted, awkwardly laughing as she realized that there was only one bed in the suite along with a sofa to sleep on. “…guess that I’ll take the sofa. You and Jessi can have the bed.”

“That’s fine with me,” Nicole said, turning towards Jessi, “that sound all right to you too, Jessi?”

“Yep.”

“All right then. Let’s start getting settled in,” Jane said, kicking her boots off to one corner of the room, but keeping her jacket on before grabbing the remote for the television.

“So, going to see if there’s been any more updates?” Nicole asked and saw Jane give a nod of her head as her answer. “Then, we’ll go ahead and take our showers and get changed,” she added as the two of them left the room, intent on trying to find some clothes to change into for later before taking their showers.

“So…everything’s gone to hell…there are zombies everywhere…somebody is dropping bombs…and I’m sharing a room with Nicole…dear god, I swear that if I get out of this alive I am so going to write a book about this,” Jane told herself as she piled her crowbar and guns against the wall and turned the television on.

###

“Technical difficulties…technical difficulties…nothing but static…technical difficulties again,” Jane muttered to herself as she put the remote down and tried to run her hand through her hair only to realize that she couldn’t with how stuck together and encrusted with blood her hair still was from the other day. “Perfect timing,” she added after a moment as she heard the water in the bathroom turn off and listened to the sound of the door opening.

“Hey Jane, if you want to take a shower, it’s all yours now,” Nicole called out, toweling off her hair and setting the towel down on a nearby table as she and Jessi jumped on the bed–both clad in pajamas.

“Thanks. Oh, by the way, it looks like every news station that this hotel can pick up is either having technical difficulties or is completely offline.”

“Great…I guess that we’ll just have to check the Internet tomorrow and see if we can’t find out something through it. We did take that laptop with us, right?”

“Yep, I remember seeing Josh carry it up to his and Michael’s room earlier,” Jessi mentioned.

“All right then, guess that I’ll try to find some clothes for the night and take a quick shower,” she told them, walking out of the room.

###

“Ouch! Damn it,” Jane muttered to herself, wincing as she tried to get all of the blood washed out of her hair–realizing that dried and encrusted blood had a habit of being _really_ hard to get rid of. “At least that was the last of it,” she said to herself as she stretched a little and enjoyed the sting of the hot water as it continued to rain down on her skin. It hurt a little, but at the same time, it reminded her that she was still alive and that was something that she _really_ wanted right now.

“What about tomorrow though? And the day after that? And the week after that? We’re alive right now, but this world…” she muttered before collapsing to the floor of the shower as the realization of their predicament suddenly hit her. “Just a few days ago we were just getting ready for Spring Break and now–now we’re in the middle of a zombie outbreak. People everywhere are dying, we’ve had to kill other _human_ beings just to survive, and Jessi–she’s just a little kid. It’s not _right_ for her to be stuck with us in this mess,” she mumbled to herself, her thoughts spinning and spinning until they all tried to force their way out at the same time.

“But–but, I’ve got to be strong. Josh, Michael, Nicole, and Jessi. I can’t let them down. I don’t know how much farther that I’ll be able to keep on going, but I can’t stop now. Even if I can’t fix any of what’s happening around us, maybe–maybe I can still keep everybody together and sane. Maybe this outbreak will be stopped somehow and we’ll be able to start a new life without worrying about being killed and eaten every moment. Well, for Jessi’s sake as well as our own, I really hope that maybe that dream can come true.”

With that said, she slowly got back to her feet and turned the water off as she stepped out of the shower–grabbing a nearby towel as she made her way towards the sink. She spent a moment toweling her hair off before putting her glasses back on and wrapping the towel around her chest. “Well, at least I don’t look like a reject from a horror movie anymore,” she said, chuckling as she tried to push the things that she had told herself in the shower out of her mind. “Of course, I don’t really look like a main character either,” she added after a moment as she glanced in the mirror and saw the acne on her face as well as the acne scars on her breasts before glancing slightly further down and wincing at the temporary marks that the binder had left in her skin.

###

“Hey Jane, we were beginning to wonder if you fell asleep in the shower,” Nicole mentioned as Jane closed the bathroom door and walked towards the bed–clad in someone else’s pajamas as well as a sports bra that she had found in a suitcase while her clothes–along with two new shirts that she had found–were in the washer just like Nicole’s and Jessi’s.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” she replied as she saw their eyes catch sight of the leftover marks on her skin from her binder before they motioned for her to come over towards the bed. “Holy crap,” she muttered as she reached the bed and noticed the pile of DVDs that were lying in front of the girls.

“I just thought that it would be something to get our minds off of everything for a little while.”

“Great thinking, Nicole,” she replied as she got up on the bed and saw Jessi smile a little as Jane positioned herself next to her with Nicole taking up the spot on Jessi’s other side. “So, have you two found anything so far?” Jane asked as she began to glance at the covers to see if she recognized any of the movies.

“Nope, not yet,” Jessi said.

“All right then, let’s find some good ones to watch for the night,” she said as she began to sort through the pile. “Oh, cool! The original Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street–”

“Jane, no,” Nicole said as she began to sort through the pile herself, “how about…Apocalypse Now? The Thing?”

“Nicole, trust me when I say ‘no, we’re not watching those’,” she said, “now, how about Alien, Blade Runner, or–cool, An American Werewolf in London?”

“Jane, can you find anything that’s either not a horror or a really violent movie?” Nicole asked, “Evil Dead? The Godfather?”

“Umm, no to the first question and no to those movies too,” she replied, “Shaun of the Dead…Night of the Living Dead…umm, no, I don’t think that we need more reminders right now. What else is left?”

“Just one…let’s see have you ever heard of this show? Firefly: The Complete Series?” she asked as she held out the copy of Firefly to Jane–whose eyes currently had a very distinct _glint_ to them.

“Shiny,” Jane said, grinning as she took the case and opened it up to look at the discs inside. “So, neither of you has seen Firefly?” she asked and saw them shake their heads. “Well, all right then. This’ll be perfect to watch. It’s got plenty of funny moments, awesome moments, heartwarming moments–all wrapped up in a fourteen episode show that we have here,” she mentioned before thinking, “ _minus one movie though._ ” “It’s science fiction and is in no way a horror series outside of a few parts, Nicole. If I promise to warn you about the bad parts in advance so that Jessi doesn’t have to see them, would you two be fine with watching it?”

“Science fiction? You mean, with spaceships and everything?” Jessi asked, making Jane wonder for a moment that she might not actually be the only science fiction fan in the room.

“Yep Jessi, with spaceships and everything,” she confirmed, wondering a little if Jessi would be impressed by Serenity when she saw her.

“Well, all right, Jane. Besides, Jessi seems to really want to see it now anyway,” Nicole said, shrugging her shoulders.

“Great, just give me a second and I’ll get it set up,” she said as she got off the bed and placed the first disc in the DVD player. She pressed ‘Play’ before turning back towards them and deciding to recite a bit of dialogue from one of the first episodes. “Proximity alert, we must be coming up on something,” she said in a slight ‘military’ tone before switching to a tone of mock hysteria, “oh my god! What can it be? We’re all doomed! Who’s flying this thing!?” She grinned a little as she brought her voice back to normal before finishing with: “oh right that would be me. Uh, back to work.”

“That was so cool,” Jessi said as Jane plopped herself down on the bed with them–remote control in her hand and a dorky smile plastered on her face.

“Thanks,” she said, blushing a little as she heard Nicole chuckling just as the first episode began.

“ _Sergeant, Command says air support is holding till they can assess our status._ ”

“ _Our status is that we need some gorram air support. Now get back online and tell ‘em to get in here._ ”

“ _That skiff is shredding us, sir._ ”

“ _They won’t move without a lieutenant’s authorization code, sir._ ”

“ _Here, here’s your code. You’re Lieutenant Baker. Congratulations on your promotion. Now get me some air support! Pull back, just enough to wedge ‘em in here. Get your squad to high ground, start picking ‘em off._ ”

“ _High ground is death with that skiff in the air._ ”

“ _That’s our problem. Thanks for volunteering. Bendis, give us some cover fire. We’re going duck hunting…_ ”

###

“Nicole? Jane? Jessi? You three awake?”

“Mmm…what’s going on?” Jane inquired sleepily as she clumsily tried to sit up in the bed. Despite her unfocused, barely opened eyes, she seemed to notice Nicole asleep next to her, Jessi sound asleep on her other side, and a bowl of spilled popcorn on the edge of the bed. She glanced over towards the door though and saw two figures standing there. At that sight, her face began taking on a faint, dreamy smile before she managed to say, “aw, that’s sweet Josh…thank you for bringing me a brunette. Good night…” With that said, she lay down again on the bed, placed a protective arm over Jessi, and went back to sleep…that is, if she could be said to have been awake in the first place.


	7. Chapter 07

~March 13, 2008~

~4:30 a.m. – 5:30 a.m.~

 

“Get up!”

“What the hell was that for?” Jane muttered, wincing at the stinging sensation on the left side of her face.

“Had to get you up one way or the other,” Joshua replied as Michael gently woke Nicole and Jessi up.

“What’s going on?”

“Did something happen?”

“Just listen for a moment,” Joshua told them only to see Jane’s eyes widen after a moment.

“Is that a–”

“Yeah, it’s an airplane…actually; bomber would be the right term according to Josh. It made a low run near here a few minutes ago,” Michael explained as he glanced out one of the suite’s windows.

“And from the noise, it sounds like a Rockwell B one Lancer,” Joshua finished.

“Hey, wait…doesn’t our air force use Lancers?” Jane questioned as she found her glasses on the floor next to the bed and slipped them back on so that she could finally see everything that was going on.

“Yeah, we do,” Joshua began as Michael started screaming.

“It’s dropping bombs!”

“Shit! Everybody get down!” Joshua yelled before hunkering down behind the bed–even though he knew that depending on how close the bomb was it potentially wouldn’t matter what they hiding behind.

“ _Well, if nothing else, at least now we know that it’s our own damn government that’s been dropping bombs,_ ” Jane thought to herself, flinching and shaking as she heard a second–third–fourth bomb explode in the distance. She glanced over to her right to see Nicole with her eyes clenched shut and Jessi whimpering in her arms. She was just about to try to tell them it would be okay when the windows suddenly shattered and the entire room began to shake for a moment as the fifth–and so far, nearest–bomb went off.

“Okay, I think that was the last one,” Joshua said as he got up and walked over to the now shattered window. “Yeah, that was definitely the last one,” he confirmed after a moment as he watched the bomber head north towards the Tennessee state line.

“So, what just happened? Wasn’t that one of ours? Why was it dropping bombs on us?”

“Can’t you see, Michael? It’s so obvious. Our own government is trying to get rid of the zombie problem by bombing all infected areas–wiping them out along with any poor bastard caught in the middle of it. It’s actually pretty funny when you think about it,” Jane replied, laughing as she managed to get the words out. She’d never had that much faith in her government before…but this? You just didn’t do indiscriminate bombing to get rid of a problem–especially when it resulted in you treating your own people as collateral damage in the process.

“Jane?”

“Wha–oh, Jessi,” she said as she stopped laughing and realized that Jessi was looking at her with a worried and maybe even scared look in her eyes. “Sorry,” she muttered as she got to her feet and faced all of them, “Josh, could…could you and Michael handle things while we get dressed since you two have already gotten dressed and grabbed your equipment? We need to see if our vehicles are still intact and what the conditions are like on the first floor from all of those bombs. We need to get that done quickly so that we can figure out whether we can continue to stay here or if we have to leave.”

“…sure.”

“Thanks, you two,” Jane replied and waited until they left before turning back towards Jessi and Nicole, “Jessi, I’m really sorry if I scared you. I–I didn’t mean to.”

“It–it’s okay…just–just don’t do it again,” she said.

“So, we can’t trust our own government now? What do you think the chances are that they created those things…zombies…whatever they are, Jane?” Nicole asked, glancing out the window at what was left of the city of Tupelo.

“Considering everything else? I’d say that the chances are pretty good that we did create them,” she replied bluntly.

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Nicole admitted, sighing as she turned away from the window, “come on, let’s go grab our clothes and get dressed.”

“All right,” Jane agreed as the three of them left the room, “ _I’ve got a really bad feeling about this though…all the good luck that we’ve had so far…and what just happened with that bomber…I really think that Lady Luck’s about to screw us over._ ”

###

“So Nicole, got any ideas as to what we should do if we have to abandon this place because of the damage from those bombs?” Jane asked as she shrugged her vest on over her jacket and began to grab the rest of her equipment and guns.

“Well, I definitely don’t think that we should try to cross any state lines now considering what happened earlier,” she said as she pulled her hoodie on before grabbing her vest, “so, that means we’re stuck here in Mississippi unless you feel like trying to get out to sea.”

“Well, I’m fine with water. All of us could try to find some abandoned island and stay there until all of this blows over,” she said–seriously considering the idea–as she checked over the last of her equipment.

“The only problem with that though is the fact that we have to somehow make it down to the Gulf Coast and hope that we can find a working boat with enough fuel and everything else…”

“I know, but you know what else, Nicole? Getting out to sea might be our best bet. We already know they’re bombing all infected areas, but what if that’s not end of it? What if once they’re done bombing, they send in the military on foot to clean up what’s left? What if their orders are not just to kill all zombies but also all survivors too?” she questioned as she realized that they couldn’t even count on the ones that were supposed to be protecting them.

“Can’t argue with that,” she said as she grabbed her rifle, “well, if we’re going to head out to sea then we’re going to need to figure out how we’re going to do this. I say that we head down to Biloxi and try to find a boat there first…and if we can’t find one, then at least we’ll have two options: either stay in one of the casinos or hotels or continue making our way across the coastline until we find a boat.”

“Sounds great so far except for the part where Biloxi got bombed the other day and–” Jane began but stopped for a moment as she realized something else, “–and they’re most likely only making a single bombing run over each infected area…which means that we shouldn’t have to worry about suddenly losing our safe house if we stay there.”

“Right.”

“Of course, you do also realize that it’s going to probably be about a near six hour drive to get there considering the damage those bombs probably did to the roads,” she mentioned–a little glad that she and Nicole had dropped Jessi off with Joshua and Michael so that they could focus on getting their equipment ready.

“I kn–”

“Nicole? Jane? We’ve, uh, we’ve got a couple of problems,” Michael interrupted as he poked his head inside the room.

“Let’s hear it.”

“Well, for one we definitely can’t stay here. All the windows on the first couple of floors are blown out and there’s a couple of…holes in the front of the building now.”

“Holes? Don’t tell me–”

“Yeah, one of those bombs managed to fling our vehicles into the lobby and completely tore up the front of the building.”

“Well, how much damage did all of that do to them?”

“It completely trashed my SUV, the four-wheeler, and your car as well.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Jane replied.

“Can we at least still get the rest of the supplies out of them?”

“Sorry, but no, Josh and I already tried that. The blast and the impact buckled the doors on the vehicles as well as the trunk on your car.”

“So, all we’ve got are the clothes on our backs and the equipment that we brought inside with us yesterday.”

“That’s not all though…”

“Oh shit, don’t tell me–”

“Yep Nicole, we’ve got zombies. Those bombs killed a lot of them but the noise…”

“It attracted more of them from miles around. Yeah, we get it, Michael,” Jane said as she glanced out the shattered window and noticed the mobs of zombies combing the streets searching for the source of the noise that had brought them there. “…we’ve got to get out of here somehow. We can’t barricade ourselves in here any longer nor can we barricade ourselves in another building before they get here. We’ve got to find a working vehicle and get the hell out of Tupelo.”

“Hey, Josh told me to let you know that he’ll cover us while we get a plan together,” Michael said suddenly–nearly taking them off guard.

“Well, he’s going to need some support,” Nicole mentioned as she turned towards them, “Jane, you go and help Josh. You two are our best sharpshooters…all things considered. Michael, you’re with me. We’ll head downstairs, grab Jessi, and start looking for a car.”

“Got it!”

“Hey Michael, where’s Josh at anyways?” Jane asked.

“He should still be down in the lobby.”

“Okay, got it,” she replied as she turned to leave, “take care.”

“Just make sure that you and Josh don’t get yourselves killed while covering us and distracting them.”

“Can’t promise that,” she said and waited for a moment before laughing, “I’m just kidding. We’ll be okay. You guys just focus on finding a working car and picking us up afterwards.” With that said, she left the room and headed down the stairs–intent on finding Joshua and hoping to herself that nothing else would go wrong.

“Hey, shouldn’t you be helping Nicole and everybody with trying to find a working vehicle?”

“Well, I figure that the three of them can probably take care of that by themselves. As for you, what were you thinking? Planning on trying to cover us all by yourself? Well, who’s going to be watching your back when those zombies start surrounding you on all sides? Josh, I’m your partner–”

“Just quit it with the speech, Jane. I get it already,” he replied as he stepped over the broken glass in the lobby and began to head out towards the parking lot, “now, come on and remind me exactly why we’re partners instead of just yapping about it.”

“Heh, all right,” Jane replied, checking the magazine in her AR-10 before following her friend out into what was soon to almost certainly become a living hell.

“By the way, it fits you.”

“What?” she asked.

“Jane. It’s a much better fit than Nathan. Rolls off the tongue better.”

She smiled even though she wasn’t sure that Joshua noticed. “Thanks…and um, is everything between us still…you know?”

“Yeah, we’re still good. Don’t worry about it,” he replied before glancing around for a moment, “all right, here they come.”

“Where? I don’t see them,” Jane replied as she glanced around only to notice the three figures leaving out the side entrance to the hotel carrying the few bags that that hadn’t been left in the vehicles yesterday.

“Not the zomb–”

“Yeah, I know. Michael, Nicole, and Jessi just left by the side entrance. That’s what you were going to say, right?”

“…right,” he replied, bringing the scope of his Model 70 rifle in line with his eye as he caught sight of something moving from the other end of the street.

“Let me guess: zombies?” Jane questioned as she unfolded her rifle’s bipod and let it come to a rest on a piece of burnt wreckage that was lying nearby.

“Yeah, ten from the main street and another fifteen just wandering around.”

“Just twenty-five so far? We’ve got plenty of ammunition then.”

“Just don’t get cocky, Jane. We’ve both seen what happens when you do.”

“Yeah, yeah. I just wish that we had a full moon, but well a…waxing crescent’s better than a new moon I suppose,” she reasoned as she lined up a shot on the nearest zombie’s head, but didn’t dare pull the trigger yet.

“Got your target?”

“Yeah…ready to raise some hell?”

“Of course,” Joshua replied, baring his teeth in the form of a slasher smile much like that of a serial killer…or maybe Jack Nicholson.

“…and you tell me that _I’m_ not normal,” Jane muttered under her breath as she finally pulled the trigger and saw one–no, two–zombies crumple to the ground as Joshua let off his shot too. Within seconds, another round of shots rang out–followed by another–until all ten in the main street were dead along with the fifteen wandering around. “Whew…”

“Rawr!”

“Shit!” Jane cried out as she was tackled from behind and knocked to the ground–the right side of her face gushing blood almost instantly as the asphalt clawed at her skin. She managed to kick the zombie off after a moment though and grabbed her Redhawk–managing to put two rounds into the zombie’s skull before it could get back up. “Josh, what the hell?!”

“Sorry!” Joshua replied, only half-listening to Jane’s whining as he began to fire shots at a group of zombies making their way through the nearby wreckage–swiftly working the bolt on his rifle in-between each shot and managing a speed that nearly matched Jane with her semi-automatic rifle.

“So, think that they’ll manage to find a working vehicle?” Jane asked, trying her best to ignore the stinging pain on her face as well as the blood, as she switched magazines on her AR rifle and got back to mowing down the incoming zombies.

“Hell if I know–ah shit!”

“Wha–oh, _shit_!” Jane exclaimed as she realized that they were already beginning to be boxed in all sides by the zombies weaving in between the wreckage.

“So, what now? Run like hell or make a last stand like a bunch of idiots?”

“Uh…”

Before she could even finish though, the roar of a car engine could be heard screaming from just down the road.

“Do you think–”

“Yeah, come on!” Jane said, grinning as the two of them began to plow a path through the thinnest of the mobs surrounding them.

“Damn it! Get off!”

“Josh!” Jane accidentally screamed as she caught sight of a couple zombies that had managed to grab handfuls of Joshua’s jacket. She raised her rifle up and managed to down a few zombies before the last two managed to knock Joshua to the ground, causing him to scream in pain as Jane realized that the magazine was empty. “Shit–shit–shit–shit,” she mumbled over and over as she went for her Redhawk and barely managed to down both before they could take a bite out of Joshua. “Come on Josh, get up! Are you okay? We’ve got to get to Nicole and everybody,” she said– her words beginning to run together–as she tugged her friend up only to see him quickly cover the left side of his face.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Thanks,” he replied as they hurried through the rest of the mob of zombies towards the pair of headlights that had just appeared at the other end of the street.

“Jane! Josh! Over here!” Jessi yelled, throwing open the back right door as Nicole stopped the Tupelo police Crown Vic car.

“Give us a second!” Jane replied as she ducked to avoid one zombie’s strike before firing off two more rounds from her Redhawk to take care of the last two zombies in their way. “Josh, get in! I’ll cover y–” she began only to stop as she heard a scream and glanced over to see one zombie with its teeth sunk into Joshua’s neck. “Josh, no!”

“Go!” he screamed as he knocked Jane forward so that she could hopefully get away while they focused on him instead.

Jane nodded and forced her body to keep moving ahead as she tried to ignore the screams of her friend…but there was nothing that she could do for him now. She reached the car within moments and climbed in only to see everybody still staring at where Joshua had been standing at last.

“Nicole, go! Go!” Jane cried out, all-but screaming to get their attention as she slammed the door closed.

The car began to move after a moment and Jane sighed as she leaned back against the seat and stared out the window at the spot where she had left Joshua to die.

###

“All right, this should be far enough. Stop here for a moment, Nicole,” Jane said, breaking the nearly twenty minutes of silence.

“Okay,” she replied simply as she stopped the car in the middle of the road.

“Thanks,” Jane said as she got out of the car and motioned for Nicole to press the button to unlock the trunk. She saw the trunk pop open after a moment and nodded her thanks as she retrieved a first aid kit from one of the bags. She opened the kit and began to take out what she needed as well as a small mirror. “Shit…no wonder it hurts so much,” she mumbled as she saw the gravel and asphalt that was still lodged in the gashes in her face. She began to get to work trying to pull all the gravel out and somehow managed to get it all out eventually. After that, she did what she could to disinfect all of it before wrapping bandages around the right side of her face, leaving her eye uncovered. She packed the first aid kit back up and placed it in the trunk. Just as she closed the trunk though, she saw Jessi watching her through the back window. She tried to smile at her before she opened the door and climbed back in.

Without a word shared between any of them though, they began to head back down the road again still intent on reaching Biloxi…even with one of their own now dead.


End file.
